Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Leith Harbour and Docks Order Confirmation Bill,

Read the third time, and passed.

CLUBS (RESTRICTIONS).

Mr. GEORGE TERRELL: I desire to present a Petition on behalf of six important clubs in my Constituency—the Gladstone Liberal Club, Chippenham; the Constitutional Club, Chippenham; the Colne Liberal Club; the Colne Constitutional Club; the Neston Working Men's Club, Corsham; and the West End Working Men's Club, Chippenham—praying that the restrictions of the Central Control Board be removed from clubs in accordance with the promise made by the Prime Minister last December.

RUISLIP-NORTHWOOD TOWN PLANNING SCHEME, 1914.

Petition of James Ellis, esquire, for leave to the Proper Officer to attend and produce documents and give evidence in the High Court of Justice.

Leave given to the Proper Officer to attend accordingly.

Oral Answers to Questions — COTTON TRADE.

Mr. WADDINGTON: 1.
asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of Japanese competition, if he has any proposals to make to assist those engaged in the cotton spinning and weaving trade of Lancashire to maintain its trade?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridgeman): The Board have no reason to doubt that the efficiency and enterprise of Lancashire will enable foreign competition to be met effectually in the future as in the past. The Board of Trade are giving the matter careful attention, and if the hon. Gentleman has any specific proposals to make, my right hon. Friend will be glad to be informed of them.

Mr. WADDINGTON: Would the hon. Gentleman cease to issue licences for the import of cotton cloths so long as the Lancashire operatives are out of work?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That is a question which would naturally come before the Committee on Import Restrictions.

Major HURST: 4.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will expedite his decision as to whether the embargo on imported cotton hosiery will be continued until January, 1920, and thereby relieve British manufacturers of their present uncertainty on this point?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As has already been announced in the House, the Committee set up to advise as to import restrictions will make recommendations as to the policy to be adopted up to 1st September of this year, before which date the matter will be considered.

Major NALL: Will the hon. Gentleman impress on the Committee that any extension of the cotton hosiery trade is absolutely held up until some final decision is taken?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.

TRAVELLING FACILITIES (EASTER).

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD: 3.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received representations urging that cheaper travelling facilities shall be given at Easter; whether he has consulted the Railway Executive upon the matter; and whether any concessions can be made?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Representations to the effect mentioned have been received, and the Railway Executive Committee have been consulted; but, as I informed the hon. Gentleman on Monday last, the position of the railways does not admit of cheap travelling facilities being given at Easter.

OVERCROWDING (UNDERGROUND LINES).

Colonel W. THORNE: 8.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has received a petition, signed by several hundred people who reside in his Parliamentary division, calling attention to the overcrowded state of trains on the District
Railway; if he is aware of the seriousness of the position; and if he intends taking any action in the matter?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Several petitions on the subject addressed to Members of Parliament have been forwarded to my right hon. Friend, who is in communication with the railway companies concerned in the matter. The railway authorities are aware of the overcrowding, which is mainly due to the lack of sufficient rolling stock which, owing to the War, the company has been unable to obtain. Every effort is being made to provide additional equipment, but until it is received the company regret being unable to materially improve the service.

Colonel THORNE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that long before the War we were labouring under the same conditions in the East End of London, and that the evil is growing every day in consequence of the increased population in the East End?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes, Sir; but the difficulty is that the War has made it worse and not better.

Colonel THORNE: You are not trying to improve it either!

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes, we are!

Mr. ALFRED DAVIES: 13.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received a report as to the conditions on the Underground and District Railways as regards overcrowding, especially during the busy hours of the day; whether scenes amounting almost to violence occur sometimes at the important junctions and that in consequence public danger is caused; and whether he proposes to take any measures to improve the facilities so that workpeople and business people can return to their homes in some degree of comfort?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As stated in reply to previous questions on this subject, I am aware that overcrowding occurs on underground railways to an undesirable extent. I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer already given to-day to a question by the hon. Member for Plaistow.

Mr. GILBERT: 17.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if the underground and tube railways in London are under the control of the Railway Executive Committee; and, if not, to whom complaints of passengers as to overcrowding
of the trains on these services should be directed with the object of securing extra passenger services on these lines?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways are under the control of the Railway Executive Committee, but not the tube railways. The Railway Companies concerned are primarily responsible for providing necessary travelling accommodation, but as previously explained it is difficult for them under present conditions to make arrangements that are altogether satisfactory in this respect.

GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS.

Mr. BLAIR: 11 and 12.
asked the President of the Board of Trade (l) the amounts paid to the Railway Executive Committee under the agreement for the last four financial years ending March, 1918, and up to 28th February, 1919; and if, in these amounts, the 50 per cent. increase in fares is taken into account; (2) if he can give an estimated percentage of the Government traffic on railways since August, 1914?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As stated by my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal in reply to a question by the hon. Member for the Hornsey Division on the 19th February, the Government are considering in what form figures showing the cost of running the railways can best be made public. Pending the preparation of these figures I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the information as to payments through the Railway Executive Committee given in the published Reports of the Comptroller and Auditor-General on the Vote of Credit Appropriation Accounts. Any additional receipts resulting from the 50 per cent. increase in fares reduce the amount payable by the Government under the agreement.

GOODS STATIONS (OPENING HOURS).

Lieutenant-Colonel W. GUINNESS: 9.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the railway authorities have recently sent out instructions that goods stations are to be open for receiving and delivering goods only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.; whether this causes difficulty to farmers who, in many instances, wish to send to their station when the horses first come out, and who, if living at a distance will be unable to send there twice on the same day; and
whether he can arrange for the goods stations to be opened from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am aware that the railway companies have recently found it necessary to revise the hours during which certain goods stations are open, but I do not think that the particular difficulty to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman refers has been brought to my notice. If-however, he will let me know what stations he has in mind I will look into the matter.

FARES (WAR WORKERS AND TROOPS).

Mr. GILBERT: 14 and 16.
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) the rate of special holiday fares that were granted to munition and other war workers on the railways last year; and approximately the number of passengers carried at these special fares at Easter, Whitsun, and August Bank Holiday in 1918; (2) the rate of railway fares charged to soldiers and sailors who were granted leave from home ports or camps during last year; and approximately the number of men carried at these special rates on the railways during the year 1918?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am asking the Departments concerned and the Railway Executive Committee whether they can supply the information which the hon. Gentleman desires.

RAILWAY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Mr. GILBERT: 15.
asked the President of the Board of Trade the names of the members of the Railway Executive Committee the number of the staff they employ, and the buildings they occupy; if the cost of the Committee is borne by his Department; and what the cost has been during the War years and the estimate for the present year?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am sending the hon. Gentleman a list of the members of the Railway Executive Committee. The Committee occupies offices at 35, Parliament Street and 16, Great George Street, and employs a staff of thirty-three persons, male and female. All these persons were employés of the railway companies or the Railway Clearing House, and are still on the books of those corporations. The cost of the Committee is not borne by the Board of Trade, but forms part of the working expenses of the railway companies.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE.

APPOINTMENT OF COMMITTEE.

Mr. WADDINGTON: 5 and 6.
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will favourably consider the inclusion, in the terms of reference to the Committee on Industrial Insurance, the terms and conditions of service of all grades of the outdoor staffs of life insurance offices; (2) if, in appointing the Committee on Industrial Insurance, he will reconsider his previous decision and appoint a representative of the agents and collectors to serve on such Committee, in view of the proved value of having those actively working in a business directly represented?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The terms of reference to the Committee to be appointed to inquire into the question of industrial assurance have not yet been finally settled, but the suggestion that the inquiry should include the terms and conditions of service of all grades of the outdoor staff of industrial life offices shall receive consideration. As regards the insurance agents and collectors having a direct representative on the Committee, I am not able to add anything to the answer which was given to the hon. Member on the 13th March.

SWEDISH DOORS (IMPORTS).

Mr. MURCHISON: 10.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether large quantities of Swedish doors, sash-bars, etc., are being imported at very low prices; and whether many joinery works in the North of England are being closed down for want of orders?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not aware of any such importations. The articles mentioned would require import licences, and none have been issued.

PAPER (IMPORTS).

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir JOHN HOPE: 18.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he consulted the Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committee of the Paper Trade before he decided to allow increased imports of manufactured paper?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committee was not consulted, but the Paper Control Department has always kept in touch with the
interests concerned and was aware of the views of the trade. The Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committee has been invited to be represented when a deputation from the Paper Makers' Association is being received at the Board of Trade to-morrow, Tuesday.

Sir J. HOPE: As the hon. Gentleman has just promised in the case of cotton hosiery that the restrictions will not be removed, why is no similar treatment meted out to paper dealers?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Paper Control was set up before the Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committee was formed. They have their own advisory council, from which they derive information. In this particular instance, I do not know when it was, they should have been consulted. I am sorry they were not.

Sir J. HOPE: Will the hon. Gentleman consider the interests of the paper trade in the same way in order to prevent unemployment?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: They have been and are being considered, and a deputation on the subject is coming to-morrow.

Mr. G. TERRELL: Will these imports be stopped, or, at any rate, to some extent restricted?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: No. A decision has been come to on that subject, and I do not think it can be reconsidered.

PAPER RESTRICTION (PROHIBITION OF RETURNS) ORDER, 1918.

Colonel LAMBERT WARD: 21.
asked the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether, in view of the dissatisfaction and loss caused to newsvendors by the retention of the No Returns Order, he can see his way to explain to the House the reason for continuing to enforce this Order?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Notice has already been given in the Press of the withdrawal on 31st March of the Paper Restriction (Prohibition of Returns) Order, 1918.

GERMAN DEBTS (BRITISH CLAIMS).

Mr. SEDDON: 2.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether many British, firms have large sums of money owing to-them by Germans debtors, and that fre-
quent requests for payment or recognition of their claims have been made to the Government without results; and what steps the Government propose to adopt to see that these just debts are paid?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: This question should be addressed to the Treasury, but my right hon. Friend has asked me to reply. He is fully aware of the importance of this matter and is now receiving consideration in conjunction with the Allied Governments at the Peace Conference.

Sir JOHN BUTCHER: Now that communication with Germany is easier than it was during the War, would the hon. Gentleman consider whether the Courts could not pay out the large sums they have under their control to meet the just claims of British creditors?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The hon. and learned Gentleman had better address that question to the Treasury.

BRITISH IMPORTS INTO FRANCE.

Mr. SUGDEN: 33.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department if he will make representations to the French Government for permission to increase the amounts of British imports into France from the small amount now obtaining?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Negotiations are about to be undertaken for the revision of the Agreement which at present regulates this matter.

ALLOTMENTS.

Sir K. WOOD: 36.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether a number of allotment holders cultivating land at Fife Road under the Cultivation of Lands Order, held from the Barnes Urban District Council, have received notice to quit their allotments; for what purpose this land is required; and whether he will secure that these holders shall have security of tenure of their plots until this land is required for some better purpose than that to which it is at present being put?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Arthur Boscawen): This land is required by the owner for immediate build-
ing, and the district council have other land available which will be offered to these allotment holders.

Sir K. WOOD: 37.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether a number of allotment-holders under the Bognor Town Council have received seven days' notice to quit their allotments, which are held under the Cultivation of Lands Order, this notice expiring on 25th March; whether he will secure the withdrawal of the notices until an investigation has been made into the case; and whether, seeing that these holders have spent much time and money in preparing for the coming season's crops, and in view of the hardship involved in having to give up their plots, he will see that they are made secure in their tenure to enjoy the fruits of their work?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: The Board have been in communication with the district council on this matter. The land in question has recently been sold and the purchaser desires to use it at once for food production and eventually for building. In these circumstances the allotment-holders were warned that they would probably have to be disturbed, but it is hoped that arrangements will be made to enable them to remain in occupation till Michaelmas next in any case.

Mr. SPOOR: 40.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he is aware that dissatisfaction exists amongst disabled soldiers who have become allotment-holders in remote districts owing to their inability to market their produce because of excessive freight rates; and whether, with a view to helping these men and further encouraging others to settle on the land, steps can be taken by his Department to provide easy and cheap facilities on some co-operative basis for conveyance of produce to market?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: The Board fully recognise that for the successful prosecution of small farming transport and marketing facilities are essential. Although they have no power of themselves to provide these facilities they hope to put into operation some experimental schemes at an early date. The subject is receiving every consideration, and the Board will maintain the closest touch with the new Ministry to ensure that the requirements of agriculturists are met.

Sir E. CARSON: Is there going to be any legislation on the subject of allotments, and is the policy of the Government to encourage them?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Yes, in the Land Settlement Bill, which will be introduced shortly, there is to be legislation to encourage allotments.

Mr. SPOOR: Could some temporary arrangement not be come to? A large number of soldiers who have taken allotments think of giving them up. Seed time is right on them now. Naturally they cannot be expected to incur a great deal of expense unless they are to have some guarantee with regard to their products. Is it not possible to have some temporary arrangement simply anticipating the provisions of the Bill?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I have said we are attempting experimental schemes, and I hope it may be possible to make some arrangement.

BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (REORGANISATION).

Lieutenant - Colonel WEIGALL: 38.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether any reply has now been received from the Treasury as to the scheme of reorganisation of the Board of Agriculture?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Sanction has already been received for one portion of the scheme. As to the remainder the matter is still under consideration.

Lieutenant-Colonel WEIGALL: Shall we be able to have an answer as to the remainder on Wednesday evening, when this subject comes up for debate?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I could not possibly say.

CONTAGIOUS ABORTION.

Lieutenant-Colonel WEIGALL: 39.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the present prevalence of contagious abortion amongst cattle herds in this country, immediate steps can be taken to set up a Committee to investigate and report?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: A Committee appointed by the Board in 1905 dealt very exhaustively with the subject in all its
aspects and the Reports of this Committee are available. I do not think that any useful purpose would be served by further inquiry.

Lieutenant-Colonel WEIGALL: In view of the evidence given by Sir Stewart Stockman before the Committee on Production and Distribution of Milk within the last three months has not the position so altered as to demand further inquiry?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: No. I am informed that though the complaint in question has got worse in certain districts it is better in others. There is no evidence that it is really worse in the aggregate than it was.

Lieutenant-Colonel WEIGALL: Is my hon. Friend aware that the evidence before the Committee was to the effect that 40 per cent. of the herds of this country were now suffering from it?

Lieutenant-Colonel MURRAY: Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to take action on the original Report?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Every step is being taken to act on the original Report and to make the recommendations known to farmers.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

BRITISH OFFICERS OF INDIAN ARMY (BONUS).

Colonel YATE: 22.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether the bonus granted with effect from the 1st February to British officers of the Indian Army is to be granted in addition to the ordinary field service batta, and will it be granted to the next-of-kin of those officers of the Indian Army who have died of wounds or disease on service during the War?

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher): Any gratuity which may be granted to British officers of the Indian Army on the termination of the War would be independent of the bonus increase of pay from 1st February last, which has already been sanctioned. The former, being a grant based on the length of each officer's active service in the War, would be payable to the estates of deceased officers, but the bonus is an allowance drawn with pay.

REPORT OF SECRETARY OF STATE AND VICEROY.

Lieutenant - Colonel ARTHUR MURRAY: 24.
asked the Secretary of State
for India whether any of the opinions of the provincial governments on the Report of the Secretary of State and Viceroy have been officially received from the Government of India?

Mr. FISHER: The reply is in the negative.

PEACE CONFERENCE (MAHOMEDAN OPINION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 25.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Mahomedan population of India is being consulted as to those matters under consideration by the Peace Conference which affect the interests and aspirations of the Muslim world?

Mr. FISHER: The Indian delegation at the Peace Conference is fully cognisant of the special interests of Indian Mahomedans in the peace settlement, and the Secretary of State would take this opportunity of assuring his hon. and gallant Friend that he and his colleagues have charged themselves with the advocacy of Indian Mahomedan interests in the conviction that these form an essential part of the interests of India.

ALBANIA.

Lieutenant-Colonel W. GUINNESS: 26.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any steps are being taken to feed and care for Albanian refugees from Serbian attacks who are now taking refuge at Scutari and Zadrima?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): I am not aware of the arrival of the refugees at the places named, but there is every reason to anticipate that they would be looked after, should the need arise, by the British detachment quartered at Scutari.

Lieutenant - Colonel GUINNESS: 27.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any official information showing that bands of Greek comitadjis, under the command of Vassili Kolovas, Vassili Stilara, and Stepho, are preparing to invade Southern Albania with a view to forcing the population of that district to express themselves in favour of the Greek claims; and whether any steps are being taken to protect the inhabitants from this infraction of the
declarations which have been made in Paris that fighting is to cease until the frontiers are delimited?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I have received no information confirming the report mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member. The second part of the question does not therefore arise.

ROUMANIAN OILFIELDS (MISSION).

Lieutenant-Colonel A. MURRAY: 28.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether there has been any change in the composition of the Mission proceeding to study the condition of the Roumanian oilfields?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: Owing to business engagements, the hon. and gallant Member for Wandsworth Central found it impossible to accompany the Commission to Roumania. Mr. A. C. Hearn was therefore nominated as chairman of the Commission. Should, however, the Commission find the assistance of the hon. and gallant Member to be absolutely indispensable, he has undertaken to proceed te Roumania.

EGYPT.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: 30.
asked the Under-Seretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether telegraphic, telephonic, and railway communication between Alexandria and Cairo has been interrupted by riots arising from political unrest, and whether immediate steps have been taken to restore such communications, and with what results?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The answer to the first part of the hon. and gallant Member's question is in the affirmative. The latest reports show that railway communication between Cairo and Alexandria has been restored and telegraphic communication between Cairo and Tanta Wireless telegraphy is being used between Cairo and Alexandria.

Major Earl WINTERTON: How long is it now that telegraphic communication has been interrupted between Cairo and Alexandria? Is it not over a week, and is not the situation very serious?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I could not answer my Noble Friend's detailed question, but the situation gives cause for some anxiety, as he knows.

Earl WINTERTON: Will my hon. Friend or the Leader of the House make a statement on the whole situation in Egypt at an early date?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I will make that suggestion to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. J. JONES: Will that statement be allowed to be discussed?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: That also will be for my right hon. Friend to determine.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: 31.
asked the Under - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether General Sir Reginald Wingate, British High Commissioner in Egypt, is still being detained in this country at the request of the Government; and whether, in view of the serious political crisis which has arisen in Egypt in Sir Reginald Wingate's absence, he will be allowed to return to Egypt forthwith and given a free hand by the Foreign Office to deal with the situation?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The answer to the first part of the hon. and gallant Member's question is in the affirmative. Sir Reginald Wingate is remaining here to afford valuable advice and assistance to His Majesty's Government. In the meantime, as already announced, General Allenby is proceeding to Egypt as Special High Commissioner with supreme civil and military authority, and will receive the full support of His Majesty's Government in dealing with the situation.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: Am I to understand from that reply Sir Reginald Wingate is in any way superseded? This arrangement is only temporary, is it not?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I do not think Sir Reginald Wingate is in any way superseded?

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the Government accepting the advice of Sir Reginald Wingate?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: My answer is, I think, a sufficient reply.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: You said they were taking advantage of hearing his views. Are they accepting the views he puts?

Lieutenant-Colonel S. HOARE: Is it not rather unfortunate that General Allenby and Sir Reginald Wingate should be away from Egypt at the same time?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: General Allenby is proceeding to Egypt as fast as he can.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: 58.
asked the Prime Minister whether, as soon as order has been restored in Egypt, the Government will set up a Royal Commission to examine and report on what constitutional and departmental changes are necessary, if any, to give effect to the declared policy of the Government in regard to the future development of the administration of Egypt; and whether, in the event of such a Commission being set up, the evidence of responsible Egyptian public opinion will be taken and the present composition and functions of the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office and its relation to the Egyptian Government and the Anglo-Egyptian Civil Service reviewed?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: It has always been the intention of His Majesty's Government that as soon as possible a full inquiry should be made on the lines indicated in the first part of the question, and at such inquiry the evidence of responsible Egyptian public opinion will have every opportunity of being heard.
It would be premature, however, to decide at the moment whether a Royal Commission will be the most suitable machinery for the purpose, and the last part of the hon. and gallant Member's question does not therefore at present arise.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: Are we to understand that the Government are considering the alternative of a purely Departmental Committee of the Foreign Office?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: No; the Government is considering everything relevant to the issue.

Earl WINTERTON: May we have an undertaking that whatever Committee is set up it will not be purely of the Foreign Office?

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can we have an answer to that question?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I will confer with my Noble Friend on that point.

Mr. J. JONES: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a large number of British soldiers in Egypt are absolutely against the policy that is now being pursued?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I must have notice of that.

SCANDINAVIA (EXPORT LICENCES).

Mr. SUGDEN: 34.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether, in view of the fact that commercial representatives from the United States of America (of every section of manufacture) are selling goods without licence in Scandinavia, he will take the necessary steps to either cancel the Order for licences now required by British manufacturers and merchants for the sale of goods in Scandinavia or remedy the delay which frequently obtains in the granting of such licences?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I have been asked to reply to this question. I have no evidence that commercial representatives from the United States are selling goods without licence in Scandinavia. If the hon. Member can substantiate his allegation with any specific instances, I shall, of course, be ready to make inquiries.
With regard to the necessity for obtaining licences to export goods to Scandinavia, I must explain that the export of goods from this country may be prohibited for one or both of two reasons, namely, the necessity for conserving home supplies and the necessity for regulating imports into neutral countries contiguous with Germany Presumably the hon. Member is not referring to the former of these categories. With regard to the latter, I would refer him to the Debate of the 10th instant in this House. I am unable at present to add anything to what was said on that occasion, and to what I said on the 20th instant in reply to a question from the hon. Member for Rusholme with regard to the general policy of His Majesty's Government towards the blockade. As regards the alleged delay in obtaining export licences, the hon. Member is doubtless aware that the War Trade Department—and not the Foreign Office—are responsible for the issue of licences to export goods from this country. I am calling the attention of the former Department to this allegation.

SUPERPHOSPHATE AND COMPOUND MANURES.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL: 41.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions if he has, in
conjunction with the President of the Board of Agriculture, arranged for release for export of certain quantities of superphosphate and compound manures; if firms desirous to export these articles have to obtain a licence from the War Trade Department; if, as a condition of the licences being issued, manufacturers in quoting export prices are required to make allowance for the payment to the Government of £4 a ton in the case of compounds and £3 17s. 6d. a ton in the case of superphosphate, on the ground that these payments represent the equivalent of the total loss incurred by the State in respect of raw materials and bags used in the manufacture and packing of the articles in question; if he will explain in what way this loss arises and on what basis, by whom it was calculated, and if the trade was consulted before the arrangement was made; if he can state how many licences up to the present time have been granted as the result of this concession, and the amount of revenue that has accrued to the Government thereunder; and if, in view of the handicap which these conditions place upon British manufacturers of compounds and superphosphate, he will take immediate steps for the matter to be reconsidered, and have the advice of practical experts taken, in order that British trade may not suffer from this disability?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of MUNITIONS (Mr. James Hope): As the answer to my hon. and gallant Friend's question is a lengthy one, I propose to circulate it with the OFFICIAL REPORT.

The following is the Answer referred to:

Arrangements have been made with the President of the Board of Agriculture for the release of certain quantities of superphosphates and compound manures for export. Firms desiring to export these commodities have to obtain a licence from the War Trade Department. Manufacturers to whom licences are issued have to pay the amounts notified in each instance by the Ministry of Munitions as being equivalent to the total loss incurred by His Majesty's Government in respect of raw materials used in the manufacture and packing of the exported goods. The figures £4 per ton in the case of compounds and £3 17s. 6d. per ton in the case of superphosphates
were maximum figures, and manufacturers have been informed that the average amount recovered by the Government would be £3 7s. 4d. for compound fertilisers and £3 0s. 4d. for superphosphates, a deduction of 18s. 4d. from these amounts being made in each case where the bags are provided by the manufacturers. The loss arises from the issue by the Government to manufacturers of pyrites, phosphate rock and bags at prices below cost, and the figures above quoted were calculated from data in the possession of Explosives Supply Branch of the Ministry and the finance branch attached thereto. The exact amount repayable would of course vary with the nature of the material exported. The trade have always been aware that the Government incurred a loss on the import of raw materials for fertilisers and that accordingly an appropriate proportion of this loss would be recoverable in case of export. Four licences have been granted for export and the amount recovered is estimated at £1,000. I cannot agree with the statement that the condition in question imposes any handicap upon British manufacturers of compounds and superphosphates and no complaints to this effect have been received by the Ministry. The principle of recovering loss on the export of subsidised materials has been followed in the case of numerous commodities, and I therefore see no reason to reconsider the position.

Mr. J. JONES: Will the hon. Gentleman take into consideration the fact that the Fertiliser Manufacturers' Association has refused to negotiate with the organised workers in the trade for the purpose of dealing with their conditions? Will the question be taken into consideration?

Mr. HOPE: I will inquire into that aspect of the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOOD SUPPLIES.

ENEMY COUNTRIES.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will request the Director-General of Food Relief to issue a statement giving the amount of food which has been dispatched for the relief of the
populations of Germany and of Austria, and the amount which has reached the areas for which they are intended?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of FOOD (Mr. McCurdy): I have been asked to reply. No food has yet been sent into Germany, except into the areas occupied by Allied forces, and food will not be sent into that country until the German Government have fulfilled the preliminary conditions as to shipping and finance which have been laid down. Supplies are already at Rotterdam ready for delivery in the expectation that these conditions will be fulfilled. As regards German Austria, the Food Controller is informed by his representative on the Supreme Economic Council that about 45,000 tons of foodstuffs have been sent from various sources to this area and have reached their destination.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Has any gone to Hungary yet?

Mr. McCURDY: I should like notice of that.

MAIZE.

Major NALL: 80.
asked the Food Controller whether the Wheat Commission is imposing on corn dealers an obligation to take a proportion of beans and Irish oats when buying maize for horse feeding; and, if not, whether, seeing that this practice is contrary to an undertaking given by the Director of Contracts on 22nd January, he will say what action he proposes to take to prevent corn dealers imposing this obligation on their customers?

Mr. McCURDY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. No such obligation has ever been placed upon horse owners, the arrangement to which the hon. and gallant Member refers having been introduced for cattle-feeding purposes only as a temporary measure. This arrangement has now been withdrawn, and no dealer is authorised to insist upon the sale of beans in combination with maize, except where he holds stocks already bought under this obligation; it is believed that the stock of beans so held is now very small. I may add that there is still a marked shortage of maize and that strict economy is necessary in its use.

SPIRITS (STOCKS IN BOND).

Colonel THORNE: 81.
asked the Food Controller if he is aware that, under the
Regulations for duty-paid goods only, i.e., spirit upon which duty is paid at the time of purchase, large merchants purchase the greater portion of their stock in bond and pay duty when the same is required for use; if he is aware that, prior to the issuing of amended Regulations controlling the price of spirits bought in bond, spirits were plentiful at the high price then asked, but since the price became controlled the distillers are holding on to their goods and the merchants cannot force their hands under present Regulations; and if he intends taking action in the matter?

Mr. MCCURDY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. As regards the latter part, the Food Controller is aware that prior to the issue of the Order fixing maximum prices whisky changed hands at speculative figures; but he has no information to show that distillers are not now releasing any stocks in their possession.

Colonel THORNE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that wine and spirit merchants are compelled to supply their customers with 50 per cent. of their 1916 consumption, and that there is nothing to make the distillers and blenders supply the wine merchants with that quantity, and will he take some action in the matter?

Mr. MCCURDY: I will inquire.

FEEDING STUFFS.

Colonel Sir A. SPROT: 82.
asked the Food Controller if he can see his way to remove at once all restrictions on the sale of feeding stuffs for cattle and pigs, including millers' offals, which are at present being charged a high price?

Mr. MCCURDY: The Food Controller has already removed the restrictions on the distribution of feeding stuffs in this country. The only other restrictions imposed in connection with the sale of feeding stuffs are those set out in the Cattle Feeding Stuffs (Maximum Prices) Order, and, in view of the importance of preventing any increase in the prices charged, he does not yet propose to rescind this Order. I may add, however, that a temporary reduction of £2 per ton in the price of Millers' Offals has recently been made.

SUGAR.

Mr. STURROCK: 84.
asked the Food Controller whether he is aware that uncertainty exists in Scotland as to the
policy he is to follow in regard to the-distribution of sugar for jam-making purposes; and whether, in view of the approach of the fruit season and the commercial and domestic interests involved in this matter, he can now, or at an early date, indicate what decision he intends to promulgate?

Mr. MCCURDY: In view of the continuing stringency of sugar supplies throughout the world it will be necessary to limit strictly the issues of sugar to jam. manufacturers. An arrangement as to the issues which will be possible for the current year will be made very shortly. As regards sugar for domestic preserving, I regret that it is not possible at present to make any statement more definite than, that issued to the Press on 31st January, 1919, in which all persons desirous of making jam for home consumption were recommended to reserve as much sugar as possible out of the increased weekly ration in order to supplement such limited supplies as may be available from any surpluses in the hands of retailers during the fruit season.

Mr. STURROCK: May I ask if the hon. Gentleman can hold out any hope of an early decision being taken?

Mr. MCCURDY: I may say that the stock of white sugar in the country is very limited. As soon as we can see any surplus available for the purpose the Ministry is desirous of supplementing the supply for that purpose.

Lieutenant-Colonel MURRAY: Is it at all likely that domestic growers will receive a great deal more sugar than last year?

Mr. MCCURDY: That I could not say.

OATMEAL.

Mr. STURROCK: 85.
asked the Food Controller if he can state why, since there is an ample supply of oats in Scotland, the price of oatmeal continues to be 50 per cent. higher than flour in that country; and whether he is aware that the present price bears hardly upon the poorer classes of the community?

Mr. MCCURDY: According to the Food Controller's information, the price of oats in Scotland is declining at the present time. The question of reducing the price of oatmeal is now under consideration, and I hope to make an announcement on the subject within the next ten days.

Sir E. CARSON: Will the same announcement apply to Ireland where there are great complaints about the price?

Mr. MCCURDY: I will inquire.

PROPAGANDA (UNITED KINGDOM RESOURCES).

Mr. HIGHAM: 46.
asked the Prime Minister if, in view of the fact that no Department of the Government is now adequately supplying information regarding the habits, efforts, and resources of the United Kingdom to the peoples of allied and neutral countries, he will consider the advisability of immediately setting up a Department of public information, in order that we may efficiently carry out a programme of propaganda, at least as equally efficient as that now being conducted by the United States Government in the countries mentioned?

Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): I cannot add anything to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Frome on the 27th February.

OVERSEAS TRADE DEPARTMENT.

Mr. HIGHAM: 47.
asked the Prime Minister if he will consider the advisability of placing the Department of Overseas Trade on a better footing and housing it in proper and adequate quarters in order that it can, with efficiency and speed, supply British manufacturers with all the information they desire so that they may be in a better position to meet foreign competition in overseas markets, and thereby increase the output of British factories and workshops?

The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Sir Alfred Mond): The question of "placing the Department of Overseas Trade on a better footing" is not one for this Department. As regards the remainder of the question, the subject of the rehousing of the Department has been under consideration for some time, but no more suitable premises are available at present to which is can be transferred.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: If this is not a question for his Department, can the right hon. Gentleman say why he was asked to reply?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I can answer that question, because I asked the right hon. Gentleman to reply. I understood that the question as to putting the Department on a better footing meant better housing.

POLAND.

Sir ALFRED YEO: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government have now recognised Poland as a neutral and sovereign State, and whether, accordingly, persons born in Poland of parents who were then domiciled there are regarded by the British Government as neutral subjects and are entitled to that status?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The answer to the second part is that persons who desire to be recognised as "alien friends" by His Majesty's Government must obtain certificates from the Polish National Committee in London.

ELECTRICAL POWER.

Mr. WILSON-FOX: 49.
asked the Prime Minister if a Report has been submitted by the Ministry of Reconstruction to the War Cabinet dealing with the proposals for the reconstitution of the electrical power system of this country; and, if so, if this Report will be laid before Parliament before the introduction of the proposed Electrical Power Bill?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, the Report will be laid before Parliament as soon as it can be printed.

SILVER BADGE PARTY (POSTER).

Lieutenant-Colonel MALONE: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the posters on the offices of the Silver Badge party at 4, Spring Gardens; and whether any action can be taken to prevent public persons from being subjected to such insinuations by a body which purports to represent a section of His Majesty's Forces?

Colonel Sir H. NORRIS: 55.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that in a shop window in Spring Gardens there is a large poster denouncing one of the members of His Majesty's Government as a traitor to this country; and whether the Government purposes to take any and, if so, what steps to put an end to what appears to be a gross reflection on the honour and reputation of one of His Majesty's Ministers?

Mr. BONAR LAW: My right hon. Friend has himself taken legal action in the matter, and the subject is therefore sub judice.

FURNITURE PRICES.

Colonel Sir HENRY NORRIS: 51.
asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the high prices which are being demanded from the working classes, especially in the East End of London, for articles of domestic furniture, the charges being in many instances 200 to 300 per cent. above the pre-war standard; and whether he proposes to institute any and, if so, what legislation to deal with the situation?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think that any action By the Government is possible.

PAPER IMPORTS.

Colonel Sir A. SPROT: 53.
asked the Prime Minister if he is prepared to take immediate steps to so curtail the import of manufactured paper into the United Kingdom that the paper trade may be enabled to resume its normal condition at the earliest possible moment, by restarting paper machines at present idle, and so re-employing former employés now returning from the front?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Prime Minister has asked me to answer this question. My right hon. Friend has arranged to receive a deputation of the paper making industry at an early date. My hon. and gallant Friend will, I am sure, bear in mind that manufactured paper forms the raw material for many descriptions of industry in this country, and the question of restricting imports has to be considered from this point of view as well as from that of the paper manufacturing industry.

BUDGET.

Mr. ARNOLD: 56.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Budget will be introduced before Easter; and, if so, on what date?

Mr. BALDWIN (Joint Financial Secretary to the Treasury): My right hon. Friend regrets that he is not yet in a position to make any definite statement on the subject.

Mr. ARNOLD: Can the hon. Gentleman say when he expects to be in a position to say when the Budget will be introduced?

Mr. BALDWIN: I will ask my right hon. Friend.

EX-KAISER'S FORTUNE.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: 57.
asked the Primes Minister whether any steps are being taken to earmark the private fortune of the Kaiser as a possible source of contribution to the cost of the War?

Mr. BONAR LAW: Every possible source of payment by Germany is under consideration. I will refer the hon. Member's specific suggestion to the British representatives on the Reparation Committee.

Colonel THORNE: Has the right, hon. Gentleman seen a report in the papers this morning that the Germans have sent 1,000,000 marks to the ex-Kaiser?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I have not seen that. If it is true, I should like it for ourselves.

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPORT RESTRICTIONS COMMITTEE.

LORD EMMOTT'S RESIGNATION.

Sir DONALD MACLEAN: 59.
asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he is prepared, to make any statement with regard to the reasons for Lord Emmott's resignation as. Chairman of the Consultative Committee on Import Restrictions; and whether he will give an early opportunity for a discussion on the effect of those restrictions on the trade and commerce of the country?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: My right hon. Friend has asked me to answer this question. As already announced in this House, my right hon. Friend the President of the
Board of Trade has appointed a Consultative Council to examine the question of the prohibition of imports. The Consultative Council consists of representatives of manufacturing and distributing interests (including the co-operative societies and the retail trades), representatives of Labour, and of the Treasury and Board of Trade. It will be purely advisory, the ultimate decision in each case resting with the Government.
At a meeting of the Council on the 18th March a resolution was adopted>to the effect that, in view of the magnitude of the task and the necessity of carrying it through rapidly, the Council should work in Sub-committees, To the great regret of my right hon. Friend, Lord Emmott, who had accepted the chairmanship of the Council, finds himself unable to continue in that capacity, mainly owing to what he understands to be the view of the Council that the representatives of the interests affected should be in the majority on each Sub-committee. There does not, however, appear to be anything in the resolution of the Council to warrant this interpretation; what my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade understands the resolution to mean is that each Sub-committee should be so constituted as to be representative of the various interests, manufacturing, distributing, and consuming, which are represented on the Council itself. In view of the facts that, as already stated, the Council is only an advisory one, and that no question of permanent policy is involved, the Government see no reason for making any change in the procedure determined upon.
If there be a general desire in the House for a discussion, I am authorised by the Leader of the House to say that he will try to find time for it.

Sir D. MACLEAN: Can the hon. Gentleman say if it is the view of the President of the Board of Trade that on these Sub-committees the interest affected by that particular Sub-committee should be in a majority?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I do not think it can be. There is no desire that any Sub-committee should be loaded by a majority of any particular interest. The object is to get an impartial decision on each point. The Council will meet again tomorrow and the whole question is to be raised, including the point which has been raised by my right hon. Friend.

Sir D. MACLEAN: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he cannot put this Vote down for Wednesday or Thursday, as on Thursday the Slough question is coming up, and on Wednesday that question is also coming on in another place it will not be necessary for us to take so much time for it on Thursday?

Mr. BONAR LAW: We have no desire to avoid discussion on this subject or any other which the House wishes to discuss. As regards Wednesday, the time will be required, I think, for the further stages of Bills to be taken to-day and to-morrow. With respect to Thursday, I think the suggestion is a possible one and I shall consider it.

LEATHER.

Mr. HURD: 60.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions whether the Government hold stocks of leather in this country or elsewhere; and if they are now making or have recently made further purchases of leather in the United States, India, or elsewhere?

Mr. HOPE: The Government hold in this country stocks of certain classes of leather mainly of a quality suitable for Army requirements and war-time boots. They are now purchasing in the United States, in agreement with the leather trade, a limited quantity of those qualities of high-grade upper leather, of which supplies are very short, and which are essential for the revival of the boot-manufacturing industry. The only other leather being bought consists of Indian tanned hides, the three months' notice necessary for the termination of the buying arrangements in India not having yet expired.

GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, GREAT GEORGE STREET.

Lieutenant-Colonel WEIGALL: 61.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether the Government buildings in Great George Street are still in occupation of the Controller of the Navy; how long this occupation is likely to last; and to what Government Department they have been allocated in future?

Sir A. MOND: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. It is impossible at the present time to state how long this occupation is to last, or to
whom the premises are to be allocated in future, but this matter is now under consideration.

WORKS DEPARTMENT (EX-SERVICEMEN).

Lieutenant-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: 62.
asked the First Commissioner of Works if he will state whether, in engaging men for service in his Department, he is reserving at least 75 per cent. of these appointments for ex-soldiers and ex-sailors; and whether he can state what percentage of the total number engaged by his Department since the Armistice are ex-soldiers and ex-sailors?

Sir A. MOND: No definite percentage of appointments is being reserved, but ex-Service men are always given preference. Seventy-eight per cent. of the total number of men engaged directly by my Department since the Armistice are ex-soldiers and ex-sailors.

LOCH DOON AERODROME.

Sir S. ROBERTS: 63.
asked the Under secretary of State to the Air Ministry what was the total expenditure incurred at Loch Doon; whether the saleable plant and other assets have been removed; and what was the amount of the proceeds of sale arising therefrom?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Major-General Seely): The total expenditure to 19th February, 1919, was £484,433. In this figure I do not include the cost of land and compensation to tenants is not included. The saleable plant and other assets have already been largely removed, being either transferred for Government purposes elsewhere, or sold to other purchasers. The value of materials disposed of in these ways will amount, when removal is completed, to an estimated total of, approximately, £210,000.

Mr. J. JONES: What was the amount of sacrifice that the landlords have made?

Major-General SEELY: I have not got the figures for the land.

AERIAL COMMERCE (DOMINIONS).

Mr. HURD: 64.
asked the Under-secretary of State to the Air Ministry what measures he is adopting to carry out his
undertaking to keep in touch with aviation progress in the Dominions; and whether, seeing the vital part taken by Canada and other Dominions in the air triumphs of the War, and the necessity of developing inter-Imperial commerce and communications by aviation, he can devise means to bring the Governments of the Dominions into intimate working association with his Ministry?

Major-General SEELY: The Dominions have been asked for suitable officers to be appointed for liaison between their respective Governments and the Air Ministry. Certain of these officers have taken up their duties and are the channel for assisting a complete interchange of information and views.
With regard to aerial commerce and communications within the Empire representations of the Dominions and India in Paris are assisting the air section of the British Peace Delegation and their cooperation has been of great help in the consideration of the International Aerial Convention and the regulations and rules, of the air. The Dominions concerned are also being consulted by the Department of Civil Aviation on the subject of aerial communication and routes and every endeavour is being made to keep in close touch on these subjects.

Oral Answers to Questions — TELEPHONES.

MALE TELEPHONISTS (HOURS OF WORK).

Mr. A. SHORT: 65.
asked the Postmaster-General if male telephonists are the only Post Office servants who are compelled to work a fifty-four hour week; whether he is aware that Sundays, Bank Holidays, and Christmas Day are included in this fifty-four hour attendance without extra pay or time in lieu thereof; and whether he will, in view of the strain which is imposed upon these men by the nature of their work, consider the necessity of bringing this staff into line with ordinary Post Office conditions?

The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Pike Pease): Male telephonists are employed during the night and attend for fifty-four hours a week, but their net working hours, deducting intervals for meals and rest, are generally below forty-six weekly. The work through the night is, as a rule, light and intermittent, and involves no special
strain. The conditions of service were fixed in accordance with the recommendations of the Select Committee on Post Office Servants which reported in 1913, and my right hon. Friend is not at present prepared to alter them.

DAMAGE BY SNOWSTORMS.

Mr. SUGDEN: 67.
asked the Postmaster General if he will at once make application to the Secretary of State for War for the services of all signal sections of the Royal Engineers stationed in Great Britain to assist his staff in the re-establishing of telephone communication in large industrial areas in the North of England, where for over two months such communication has been interrupted?

Mr. PIKE PEASE: Military assistance has been extensively given to repair the damage due to snowstorms. The damage was very considerable and was not confined to the North of England. Every effort is being made to complete the repairs as soon as possible.

RENTAL (CONCESSIONS).

Mr. SUGDEN: 68.
asked the Postmaster-General if he will make concessions in the rental of telephone service to those who, by reason of facilities not being efficient and effective, have for a period of over two months been unable to use the telephone service?

Mr. PEASE: The Post Office is not liable for any loss occasioned by interruptions of telephone service, which must inevitably occur from time to time; but consideration is given to an application for rebate of rental when communication has been totally interrupted for any considerable length of time.

ROYAL ENGINEERS (POST OFFICE EMPLOYES).

Major COHEN: 66.
asked whether, while full civil pay is paid to all members of the staff who joined Royal Engineer units, Army pay is deducted from the civil pay if any other branch of the Service is joined; and, if so, what is the reason for this differentiation?

Mr. PEASE: The case is as stated by the hon. Member. The reason is that use was made in the Royal Engineers of the special postal and telegraph qualifications
of Post Office servants. In other units of the forces the special qualifications of Post Office servants had no particular value.

SUB-POSTMASTERS.

Mr. FINNEY: 69.
asked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed at a meeting of organised sub-postmasters, Stoke-on-Trent, protesting against the instructions now being issued to open sub-offices at 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., as at present, as a retrograde step; whether he is aware that this action is viewed with concern as it requires sub-postmasters to be on duty eleven hours a day and upwards, and is opposed to working-class movements for shorter hours; and if he will inquire into the matter with a view to removing the cause of dissatisfaction?

Mr. PEASE: I am aware that some dissatisfaction has been caused by the order referred to by the hon. Member, and a deputation is being received from the Sub-Postmasters' Federation on the subject.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Does this refer to Stoke-on-Trent or to the whole country?

Mr. PEASE: The whole country.

PERRANARWORTHAL, SUB-POSTOFFICE.

Commander Sir E. NICHOLL: 70.
asked the Postmaster-General why the post office at Perranarworthal, near Truro, is closed; and, in view of the inconvenience in the neighbourhood, if he will now reply to the letters from the district, and the inquiry of the hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth if the office can be again opened for the convenience of the residents of the district, who are now many miles from a post office?

Mr. PEASE: The office was closed on the resignation of the sub-postmistress, because no successor could be found. Provision has been made for the telephone work attached to the office; and as regards its postal work, I am still prepared to appoint as sub-postmaster any person, willing to provide the necessary accommodation and service on the usual terms. All letters will be replied to as soon as the information can be given.

STOCK EXCHANGE WIRE (DUBLIN AND LONDON).

Sir M. DOCKRELL: 71.
asked the Post master-General if he is aware that before installing a special wire between the Dublin Stock Exchange and London a money guarantee was required that the line would pay its way; is he aware that no call has ever had to be made in respect of the guarantee, and will he, having regard to this fact and to the large transactions in Government and other stocks which are passing between Dublin and London, restore this special wire, which during many years proved itself to be a paying proposition?

Mr. PEASE: In 1884 an agreement was made between the Postmaster-General and the Dublin Stock Exchange to continue in force for one year only under which the Postmaster-General undertook to set aside a special wire between the Dublin and London Stock Exchanges for the use of those exchanges, while the committee of the Dublin Stock Exchange undertook that if the revenue from the telegrams handed in there should fall short of £1,200, they would make it up to that amount. At the end of the year the wire was continued without a further guarantee being required, but the Postmaster-General reserved to himself the right to withdraw it at any time.
It is not expected that the telegrams to be handed in at the Dublin Stock Exchange would produce a gross annual revenue of £1,200, but I shall be glad again to reserve a wire for the use of the Dublin Stock Exchange as soon as I can do so without prejudicing the interests of the general public in Dublin.

Sir M. DOCKRELL: Has the hon. Gentleman any idea as to when that will be?

Mr. PEASE: As soon as possible. I cannot give a definite date.

CEREBRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS (CAMBRIDGE).

Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKE: 72.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he is now in a position to say whether the authorities have traced the carrier alleged to be responsible for the outbreak of cerebro-spinal meningitis at Cambridge?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): No, Sir. It has not been possible to trace the "carrier" supposed to be responsible for the outbreak of cerebro-spinal meningitis at Cambridge

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Has the right hon. Gentleman any information of any further case since 7th March, when he staged the outbreak was over?

Dr. MACNAMARA: 7th March was the date of the last case being reported. I have no knowledge of any death since the death mentioned on the last occasion.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: I was not referring to deaths, but to fresh cases.

Dr. MACNAMARA: The 7th March was the date of the last case reported.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

ROYAL FLEET RESERVE PENSIONERS.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: 73.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the Royal Fleet Reserve pensioners are only receiving about 4s. 6d. a week; that this money has been the same for the last thirty years and is not available until a man is sixty years of age; and whether, in these circumstances, he can see his way to approach the Treasury with a view to some further addition being made?

Dr. MACNAMARA: I assume from the information given in my hon. Friend's question that it relates to pensioners of the Royal Naval Reserve, and not to members of the Royal Fleet Reserve, which was only instituted in 1901. If that is so, I may state that the grant of a pension in respect of service in the Royal Naval Reserve ceased as from the 1st April, 1906, when a gratuity of £50 payable on completion of twenty years' service and attainment of the age of forty was substituted. The pension rights of men enrolled prior to the 1st April, 1906, were, however, conserved and they were given the option of taking the gratuity in lieu of a pension, if they so desired. I am advised that no alteration is considered necessary.

WAR GRATUITY (OFFICERS).

Captain REDMOND: 94.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether Malta
is classified as a home station; whether a Staff captain at Malta is paid at the rate of 15s, per day plus allowances, and as a result his war gratuity will be considerably less than that of an officer of similar rank on the General Staff at Whitehall, whose gratuity is based on consolidated pay; and what steps he proposes to take to alter this distinction?

The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Churchill): Malta is not a home station, and a Staff captain there is paid at the rate stated in the question. As regards the effect of this upon the war gratuity of a temporary officer, I can add nothing to my reply of the 18th instant to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Armagh (North).

Captain REDMOND: Would the right hon. Gentleman say why a Staff officer at Malta should be penalised as against a Staff officer in Whitehall?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am sure that is not the intention, but the working out of a Royal Warrant with regard to pay no doubt produces some anomalies in exceptional cases.

Captain REDMOND: Will the right hon. Gentleman remedy this anomaly, and if not, why not?

Mr. CHURCHILL: If I undertook to remedy every anomaly, I would be committing myself to a task far beyond my power.

Captain REDMOND: Will the right hon. Gentleman not admit that it is a very serious anomaly, and that a Staff officer on active service should get at least as great a reward for his services as a Staff officer in Whitehall?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Whitehall is just as near the fighting front as Malta.

Captain REDMOND: 96.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether, under existing regulations, regimental officers will receive considerably less war gratuity than general Staff officers of similar rank; whether this anomaly is due to the fact that in the case of the former the war gratuity is based upon so many days' pay for each year's service, without regard to allowances, and, in the latter, pay and allowances are treated as consolidated pay and the gratuity is based on the sum total of both; whether he is aware
of the dissatisfaction which this anomaly is causing, and what steps, if any, he proposes to take to remedy it?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given to a similar question put by the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh on Tuesday last. The amount of the respective gratuities is fixed under Article 497 of the Pay Warrant, and the only possible way of assimilating them now would be by levelling up to the maximum. As explained in my previous answer, I see no sufficient reason for taking that course, in view of the great expense entailed.

Captain REDMOND: Will not the right hon. Gentleman admit that a regimental officer is entitled to equally great a gratuity as a Staff officer of the same rank?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I really cannot undertake to argue the merits of every decision in regard to relative pay and gratuities of all ranks in the Army across the floor of the House at Question Time. If a general case as to the emoluments of the Service is raised, I shall be glad to make a general reply dealing with one rank and station as against another, but there are all sorts of points that can be legitimately be taken against our system I give information upon them at Question Time, but I cannot argue them.

Captain REDMOND: On the general question, is not an officer who has been to the front in a regimental capacity, in his opinion entitled to as great a reward for his services as an officer who has given his services on the Staff?

Mr. CHURCHILL: As I say, I cannot argue the merits of a particular case across the floor of the House at Question Time.

Mr. STEWART: 100.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will state whether the amount of war gratuity given to officers of the Regular Army is considerably less than the gratuity granted to temporary Army officers, and will he issue a statement showing the differences; whether a temporary officer who has now joined the Regular Army will be paid his gratuity on the basis of his service as a temporary officer or as a Regular officer; and will he explain the reason why officers who have rendered similar services and accepted similar risks are not similarly rewarded?

Mr. CHURCHILL: A statement of the gratuity issuable to officers of the Regular Army and to temporary officers would be too lengthy for a verbal answer. The basis of calculation is laid down in Article 497 of the Pay Warrant as regards temporary officers, and in Army Order 85 of 1919 as regards Regular officers. A temporary officer granted a Regular commission receives a gratuity as a Regular officer as laid down in Army Order 85. The gratuity issuable to the temporary officer forms part of his contract of service, and the scale was fixed after the South African War at a liberal figure to cover reinstatement in civil life. The gratuity to the Regular officers is a pure gratuity over and above his terms of service, and no question of reinstatement in civil life arises.

Mr. STEWART: Why should not the Regular officers get the same consideration as the temporary officers?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I think there is a good deal to be said from the point of view of my hon. Friend, but I am not prepared, as at present advised, to meet the case.

Captain REDMOND: Another anomaly.

SASINE OFFICE, EDINBURGH (ENGROSSING STAFF).

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir J. HOPE: 74.
asked the Secretary for Scotland whether the engrossing staff of His Majesty's Sasine Office, Register House, Edinburgh, will be eligible for the appointments in the new Departments of the Civil Service in accordance with the recent Treasury Circular issued to heads of Departments of the Civil Service?

Mr. BALDWIN: The provisions of the Treasury Circular of 29th January last are restricted to permanent Civil servants, and are not, therefore, applicable to the staff in question.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.

Captain REDMOND: 75.
asked the Minister of Labour whether the unemployment benefit has been refused to men who worked at torpedoed ships during the War and who are since out of employment; and whether he will rectify this grievance?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. Wardle): I am not aware of the circumstances to which the hon. and gallant Member refers, but if he can furnish particulars I will look into the matter.

PROFIT-SHARING SCHEMES.

Mr. HURD: 76.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he has gathered further information respecting profit sharing and labour co-partnership in the United Kingdom since the issue of the Report of 1912 (Cd. 6496); and whether, seeing the immediate importance of the subject as affecting industrial unrest, he will now present a further Report?

Mr. WARDLE: Information upon this subject is now being collected from the various firms who have schemes of profit-sharing and labour co-partnership in force, or who, having had such schemes in force, have since abandoned them; and it is proposed to issue a further Report as soon as the necessary information can be obtained.

Mr. HURD: Would it be possible for the hon. Gentleman to obtain information of a corresponding kind from other countries, such as the United States?

Mr. WARDLE: I will make inquiries.

SOLDIERS' FUNERAL EXPENSES.

Sir K. WOOD: 77.
asked the Pensions Minister whether he is now in a position to state whether any arrangements have been made which will obviate the necessity of applications to the Poor Law authorities in respect of soldiers' funeral expenses?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Sir James Craig): I am glad to be able to announce an increase in the maximum funeral grant for discharged disabled men from £5 to £7 10s.. The increase is being immediately notified to the local war pensions committees.

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: 87.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he it yet in a position to make any announce-
ment in regard to the Committee which is proposed to be set up to inquire into old age pensions?

Mr. FREDERICK ROBERTS: 86.
asked whether he can now state the constitution of the Committee on old age pensions and its terms of reference?

Mr. BALDWIN: The hon. Member for the Middleton and Prestwich Division has consented to act as Chairman of this Committee. The names of the members of the Committee will be announced as soon as possible. The terms of reference are as follows: To consider and report what alterations, if any, as regards rates of pension or qualification should be made in the existing statutory scheme of old age pensions.

Colonel THORNE: Does that include the question of limit of income?

Mr. BALDWIN: Certainly.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: When will the hon. Gentleman be in a position to give the names of the Committee?

Mr. BALDWIN: I hope in a very few days.

VENEREAL DISEASE.

Major COURTHOPE: 88.
asked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has statutory powers to schedule venereal disease as notifiable disease; and whether, in view of its prevalence, he will immediately exercise this power?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Major Astor): The Local Government Board are empowered by the Public Health Acts to make Regulations with a view to the provision of facilities for the treatment of persons affected with any epidemic or infectious disease, and for preventing the spread of such diseases. Regulations have already been made for the provision of treatment for persons suffering from venereal diseases, and as at present advised, my right hon. Friend is not prepared to propose Regulations providing for the compulsory notification of such persons. I may add that the question of law raised by the hon. Member is in some doubt, and is at present the subject of examination.

Sir F. HALL: Is it not the fact that the great bulk of the medical men are in favour of compulsory notification?

Major ASTOR: That question does not arise on this.

Mr. STEWART: 98.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether soldiers who may be suffering from venereal disease are ever released from hospital while in an infective condition?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am informed that it is the practice to retain soldiers suffering from venereal disease in hospital at least so long as they are in an infective condition.

Mr. STEWART: Can the right hon. hon. Gentleman make further inquiries about that, because the news as it comes to hand from outside sources does not confirm that?

Major COURTHOPE: 102.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that on the 4th instant the registrar of Cherryhinton military hospital reported to a local medical officer of of health that on the previous day a soldier had been discharged from hospital at his own request suffering from venereal disease and in an infectious condition; whether, under the existing regulations, the officers in charge of military hospitals are unable to retain a venereal patient, who is due for demobilisation, in order to complete the treatment of the disease; and whether, in the interest of the public health, he will prohibit the release of men suffering from venereal disease in an infective condition?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Inquiry is being made, and I will communicate with my hon. and gallant Friend as soon as I am in a position to do so.

UNITED STATES ARMY (UNIVERSITY STUDIES).

Lieutenant - Colonel A. MURRAY: 90.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether a certain number of officers; of the United States Army awaiting repatriation are to undergo courses of study at English universities; and, if so, whether he will give the House a general outline of the arrangements that have been made in this connection?

Mr. HERBERT FISHER: I understand that the Army Educational Commission of the American Young Men's Christian Association, in concert with General Headquarters of the United States Armies in France, have made arrangements under which a number of selected officers of the United States Armies in France, being men of at least two years' college standing or graduates whose university courses were interrupted by the War, will be sent on detached service up to 30th June of this year in order that they may attend universities in the United Kingdom. The officers concerned will receive their full military pay, and will themselves pay the fees for the university courses which they attend.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISATION.

MESOPOTAMIA.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: 96.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can say when men who have been over three years in Mesopotamia will be returning home; whether he is aware that some of these men have been applied for by the officials in the Devonport Dockyard; and can he do anything to hasten their demobilisation?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Such men as are eligible for demobilisation are being brought home as rapidly as the exigencies of the Service and transport facilities permit. Troops in Mesopotamia have equal chances of demobilisation with troops in other theatres subject to the limitations imposed by shipping. It is possible that some of these men have been applied for by the dockyard in question, and, if eligible, they will be demobilised in due course.

ARMY SIGNALS (FRANCE).

Mr. J. JONES: 97.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he has been informed of the unrest which exists in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Army Signals in France; whether men who have served continuously as volunteers since August, 1914, are being compulsorily retained against their will; whether men of twenty-three and twenty-four are being released, whilst the men over forty-one are being retained; whether 1914 men have been retained in France and 1917 and 1918 men released from depots in England; whether the command pay of officers commanding is dependent on the strength of the units
and leads to the retension of unnecessary men; and whether, in view of the effect of the retention of these men, he will institute an immediate and searching inquiry?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Inquiries are being made, and I will inform my hon. Friend of the result as early as possible.

COURTS-MARTIAL.

The following question stood on the Paper in the name of Mr. BOTTOMLEY:

104. To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can now state the composition and terms of reference of the Committee on Courts-Martial?

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I have again been asked to postpone this question, and as I have already postponed it several times, when may I put it down again?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am in hopes that on Thursday I shall be able to give an answer.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I will ask it again on Thursday.

PALACE BARRACKS, HOLYWOOD (WOMEN'S LABOUR).

Mr. DEVLIN: 105.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the hours women have to work in the Navy and Army Canteen Board, Palace Barracks, Holywood, county Down; whether he is aware that these women have to start at 8 a.m., and continue working until 9 p.m., for seven days a week, except one half-holiday; and whether he will take action to remedy this state of affairs?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am informed that the actual hours of work of the canteen and kitchen staff are from 8.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. These hours include time taken for breakfast, dinner and tea. A half-day is allowed weekly, and week-end leave is given in turn. Extra leave is given on Sunday as opportunity offers. In the circumstances no action appears to be called for.

INTERNED ENEMY CIVILIANS (REPATRIATION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 107.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Depart-
ment whether the interned aliens who want to go back to Germany or elsewhere have now gone, and whether those who are married to English wives can now be released from internment?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): The repatriation of the interned enemy civilians who are willing to go is well advanced, but is not yet finished. In present circumstances I regret I am unable to comply with the suggestion in the latter part of the. hon. and gallant Member's question.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the fact that these men have been separated from their wives for three years?

Mr. SHORTT: All that is being considered.

NORTH RIDING OF YORKSHIRE (ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE).

Mr. DOYLE: 108.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the fact that a young woman named Mirabelle Hallen, of the Women's Royal Air Force, Marske, Yorkshire, was kept in police cells at Redcar from Friday evening until Tuesday morning, when she was conveyed to Guisborough Court for trial; whether this detention in police cells for ninety hours was directly due to the fact that Redcar has no resident magistrate's clerk; whether he is aware that the only charge against this young woman was one of disobedience of an order by her commanding officer, and resulted in her acquittal; whether he will take steps to secure provision being made for dealing with cases at the earliest possible moment in the district in which they reside; and whether he is prepared to conduct an inquiry into the whole question of administration of justice in the North Riding?

Mr. SHORTT: My attention has been called to the case. The facts appear to be as stated in the question, except that I am informed that the postponement of the case was due to the justices' clerk being unable to attend owing to domestic bereavement. The arrangements for the hearing of the case at Petty Sessions are entirely in the hands of the justices, but I will bring this case to their notice.

OTTO VON PISCHOF.

Brigadier-General COLVIN: 109.
asked the Home Secretary whether Otto von Pischof, an Austrian by birth, but a naturalised British subject, who fought against this country during the War, is still a British subject and at liberty to travel in Allied countries and enjoy the privileges of British nationality?

Mr. SHORTT: The question of the revocation of this man's certificate of naturalisation has been referred to the Certificates of Naturalisation (Revocation) Committee. I understand that he is not in possession of a British passport and enjoys no privileges as a British subject abroad.

INCOME TAX (MARRIED WOMEN.

Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: 111.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether a woman with an income from dividends marrying after the 6th May loses her right of claiming any relief from Income Tax for that year from the date of marriage?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain): The appropriate relief would be allowed in respect of the wife's income, but in the circumstances mentioned a separate repayment under Section 9 of the Finance Act, 1914, could not be granted.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Are we to understand from the right hon. Gentleman that there is no remedy under these circumstances?

Sir F. HALL: May I ask whether, on the introduction of the forthcoming Budget, steps will be taken to mitigate this great anomaly?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I must refer the hon. Member to the answers I have already given.

Mr. J. JONES: Will he also consider the desirability of relieving those women married to working men who have no income?

Sir F. HALL: Is the House to entertain the idea that the right hon. Gentleman will bring in that measure in the Budget?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I have nothing to add to the replies which have already been given on the subject.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: May I very respectfully ask my right hon. Friend whether he will reconsider his decision not to receive a deputation on this subject from women?

Mr. J. JONES: And also from working women who have no incomes?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: An Inquiry is going to take place into the whole question of Income Tax, and I think it would be obviously wrong for me to prejudge the results of that Inquiry by receiving deputations and deciding upon the question.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Is it impossible to redress any anomaly pending that Inquiry?

Oral Answers to Questions — CAPITAL ISSUES.

STATEMENT BY MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

Sir HENRY DALZIEL: (by Private Notice) asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is now in a position to make an announcement in regard to the control of capital issues?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I have given very careful consideration to the various representations which have been made to me in regard to Defence of the Realm Regulation 30 F providing for the control of capital issues, and I have now, after consultation with Members of this House who have shown a special interest in the question and with my City advisers, come to the conclusion that, in view of the general movement towards the removal of restrictions upon trade and industry, I am no longer justified in attempting to maintain Government control over the distribution of capital for domestic purposes.
An amending Regulation is accordingly being prepared, which will exempt from the requirement of a Treasury licence all issues by companies established in this country where the issuing company certifies upon the prospectus that no part of the proceeds of the issue is to be applied to capital purposes outside the United Kingdom.
As regards issues by British companies for capital purposes abroad, and issues by or on behalf of persons resident abroad, the position is to some extent altered by the recent decision to set free
the foreign exchanges, but, until the full effects of that decision have become apparent and as long as the domestic demands for new capital both for trade and industry and for national purposes, are so pressing, I do not think it would be safe to remove the restrictions upon investment outside the United Kingdom. The new Regulation will, therefore, provide that no such issues shall be permitted except under licence.
The restrictions will not apply to rearrangements of existing capital where no new money is raised, or to the renewal of maturing securities except where the person responsible for repayment is a person resident outside the United Kingdom.

Sir H. DALZIEL: Will my right hon. Friend say when the new Order in Council will be issued?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: It is now being drafted, and I will get it passed as early as I can. The decision to which I have now come—not that contemplated a little time back—involves a new Order, and I am afraid it must take a day or two.

Oral Answers to Questions — SELECTION.

STANDING COMMITTEE B.

Sir SAMUEL ROBERTS reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B: Colonel Allen; and had appointed in substitution: Major Prescott.

Report to lie upon the Table.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

They have agreed to,— Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Bill, with Amendments.

INCREASE OF RENT BILL.

Lords Amendments to the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Bill, to be considered To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 39.]

Orders of the Day — MEDICAL TREATMENT OF CHILDREN (IRELAND) BILL.

Order rea dfor Second Reading of the Public Health (Medical Treatment of Children—Ireland) Bill.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. A. W. Samuels): I beg to move "That the Bill be now read a second time."
This Bill extends to Ireland the benefits of medical treatment already enjoyed by children in English elementary schools, and enables local authorities to have medical inspection of children in elementary schools in Ireland. Similar provisions for some time back have been in existence in England, but have not yet been enforced in Ireland. I believe the Bill at present, so far as I can understand, is not opposed by any portions of the community in Ireland, and, in fact, is largely welcomed. The councils of the county and county boroughs are to be the local authorities for carrying out the purposes of the Act, and it will apply to schools of an elementary character, either national schools or schools recognised by the Local Government Board as providing efficient elementary education. The Treasury will provide an amount not exceeding one-half the expenses as may be incurred by the local authority in setting this medical relief in operation and carrying it into effect. It is hoped that it will be largely availed of in the country.

Captain CRAIG: Will my right hon. Friend inform us, if he can, whether the provisions of this Bill are practically the same as those which exist in England, and to what extent the conditions in England are mandatory?

Lieutenant-Colonel W. GUINNESS: I would also like to know why it is that this Bill is drafted in a weaker form than the English Bill. I have just looked up the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, and I find there that it is not optional in England, but is imposed as a duty on the local education authority in England to provide medical inspection. It is quite true that medical treatment is not compulsory, but if the local authority has brought to its notice the bad state of the children's health, it is obviously very diffi-
cult for that local authority to neglect its duty of providing necessary medical treatment as well. In Ireland, public opinion is very much more backward than in England, and if it is necessary to make this a duty in England, it surely is inadvisable to leave it optional in Ireland. There is a tuberculous rate higher than anyhere else in the Three Kingdoms, and it is rising, and I do appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to make this Bill really mandatory by substituting "shall" for "may."

Mr. M'GUFFIN: I would like to express my dissatisfaction with the way in which this Bill has been drafted. It seems to me that the Government have lost sight of, or never comprehended, the actual conditions under which schools have to be maintained at the moment. I think the Bill shows ignorance on the part of the Government with respect to the actual conditions which prevail in elementary schools, not only in Belfast, but throughout Ireland. If the Ministry, first of all, had set up a sort of roving Commission to ascertain what are the actual conditions of elementary education in Ireland, I think they would have come to a different conclusion from what they seem to have come to, and would have modified this Bill accordingly. The fact is we either require this Bill or we do not. If we require the Bill, then it should have been more drastic and more sympathetic, and if we do not need it, why introduce it at all? It appears to me as if we were reversing the method of procedure. It is like baling a boat instead of corking the leak. The fact of the matter is that we regard it at the moment as due to the insanitary condition of the schools that it is necessary to introduce this Bill at all. We know, as a matter of fact, that children from time to time contract their ailments in the very schools where it is proposed to establish medical inspection. In my district the aristocracy have their fine schools to which to send their children, and from which they can graduate into the colleges, which are splendidly endowed. The middle class have seminaries, or model schools, in which the pupils for the greater part are of a selected character. As regards the other elementary schools, the children are herded together, and the schools are overcrowded in many instances. They are absolutely insanitary, and nothing short of a menace to the health of the children who have to attend them.
I have heard it said that the schools in Belfast can be divided into good, bad, and indifferent. A more correct definition of the matter would be that they may be divided into good, bad, and the remainder very bad. I have wandered into a few schools in the Division I have the honour to represent, and I find that some have only one room for all the scholars, and the air throughout the school hours has never an opportunity of being renewed. I, moreover, am aware of the fact that in many instances the schools have never been whitewashed and never painted. I know large schools of a voluntary character where 150, 200, or even 250 children can be accommodated, but I am perfectly right in saying the schools have not been whitewashed or painted, owing to the fact that there is no income for the purpose, and, being linked to the Church, the little endowment there is very often goes to the decoration or endowment of the church rather than to the school. The Belfast schools are no better or worse than elsewhere, but throughout Ireland there is a great need for the reform of the insanitary conditions. It must come, sooner or later, or otherwise there will be a condition of affairs both in the city and the country very serious indeed.
4.0 P.M.
The ailments of school children are in many instances contracted at school. The child is often subjected to sitting in draughts and contracts bronchial ailments. I know, as a matter of experience, that is frequently the bedrock and root of the whole thing. There are no heating arrangements made in connection with these elementary schools, and some of them have to contribute towards the fire that warms the schools. It is a deplorable condition in a city that aspires to any degree of civilisation. The fact of the matter is that in Belfast at least the schools for the most part are closed owing to the fact that one epidemic after another seizes the children and that they are decimated, and the schools have to be closed. But why is it that the cinema houses get leave to remain open while the schools have to be closed? I have no objection to cinema houses, but the fact is that the cinema houses are better looked after and washed out and cleaned more often than the schools are, and there is less risk there than there is in the schools.
My objection to this Bill is that it is permissive; not only will the district councils and rural councils be able to evade their
duty in respect to this matter, but they will have no zest to carry out the necessary sanitary or medical reform. There is another thing that occurs to me. I have seen these children in the elementary schools come in with their wet clothes on. That is often the cause of illness. They come and take their seats in these schools, which are badly heated and too much ventilated, and they contract diseases by that means, and there is no provision made for that matter. Unless the Government take this Bill in hand seriously, and go to the bedrock of the whole difficulty, there is little hope that any good will attend the legislation they have in view. The people have come to see that it is necessary that their children should be educated. It is the only chance that the children of the democracy have. The working people are going to see that their children have the same chances as other children.

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is dealing with the whole question of elementary education in the schools in Ireland. That does not arise under this Bill. This Bill is limited to the provision for the medical treatment and for the medical inspection of children. The hon. Member must confine himself to the four corners of the Bill.

Mr. M'GUFFIN: I bow to your ruling, but it is for the purpose of showing that we must have more than medical inspection that I make these remarks. We must have something of a preventive nature. My suggestion is that in connection with this Bill some Clause should be introduced in regard to sanitation. The people are looking forward to improvement in this direction. We know how necessary to the well-being of the community is the health of the working classes, and I hope the representatives of the Government will see that so far as possible this Bill will be amended in the interests of the working classes that I have the privilege and the honour to represent.

Captain CRAIG: I shall support this Bill, of course, and so will, I am sure, all my Friends sitting around me on these benches; but I would like to ask the Attorney-General for Ireland one or two questions, and to get information from him at this stage of the Bill. The Bill is permissive, as has been pointed out, but in those cases where the local authority put the Bill into force I should like to know what the exact position is then. So far as I can see, as soon as a local authority puts
a Bill into force it lies entirely with the parent of the child whether he shall prohibit the local authority from putting the Bill into force. In Sub-section (3) of Clause 1 it says:
Nothing in this Act shall be construed as imposing any obligation on a parent to submit his child to medical inspection or treatment or as authorising a local authority to establish a general domiciliary service of treatment of children by medical practitioners.
When the right hon. Gentleman comes to reply I would like him to tell us how that Section can be reconciled with the idea of this Bill being made compulsory by the local government. Another point on which I should like to have some information is, what effect the inclusion of Ireland in the Ministry of Health Bill is going to have on this Bill. In Sub-section (2) of Clause 1 it says:
In exercising their powers under this Section a local authority shall act in accordance with Regulations made by the Local Government Board and approved by the Treasury.
It seems to me that under the provisions of the Health Bill which is before Parliament that will have to be altered, and that it will be the Chief Secretary, as the representative in whom the duty of looking after the health of the children will be vested, who will have all the powers that are contained in that Clause. As has been pointed out, just as in the case of health generally, so the condition of school children in Ireland, so far as the insanitary conditions under which they live are concerned, is far worse than in England, Scotland, or Wales. If that is so, we require more drastic measures than those even which are in the hands of the authorities in England to remedy that state of affairs. I regret, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman has not taken the bull by the horns and made this Bill mandatory from the very beginning, and not only mandatory in the sense that the local bodies must carry out the provisions of the Bill, and hope that he intends to put much more drastic powers into their hands. If you give people power to provide for the medical treatment of children before or at the time of their admission to elementary schools, you should also give them power to carry out the treatment to its logical conclusion. Take the case of a child, say, with bad feet, a child which obviously, unless something is done, will not be able to walk properly, but who could, by a simple operation, be cured and made a much more useful member of the commu-
nity—in that case, I submit that the local authority ought to be able to carry out that small operation. In the matter of health, such measures as are necessary to cure a child of tuberculosis should be carried out by the local authority. In the same way, throughout the whole range of ailments from which children suffer, it is no use giving them power of medical examination without giving them the power of treating and, if possible, making these children physically better members of the community. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will answer these questions with reference to the extent to which these powers can be carried out. It seems to me that the Clauses to which I have referred point to the fact that the local authority may direct as many things as they like, but that it lies entirely with the parents to say whether they will adopt the suggestions. In no sense is the Bill mandatory, even where the local authority decides to adopt the provisions of the Bill. As has always been the case, it is the parent who says whether he will see that his child is properly treated from the medical point of view. That is what we want to prevent in this Bill. It is assumed that if the parent was anxious for the health of his child he would have taken the necessary steps before. Not having done that, when the child comes to school then the authorities take hold of him and have him submitted to medical inspection, and if he is found to be suffering, then I maintain that the parent, having neglected his duty, the local authority should step into his place and do whatever is necessary to put the child in as physically fit a condition as is possible.

Sir MAURICE DOCKRELL: I am sure I have the sympathy of the House in speaking for the first time. I feel that even if it were the last time I should have the opportunity of speaking here I shall have been glad I had this opportunity of speaking on behalf of a Bill for which I have the very strongest possible sympathy. This Bill goes much deeper than the question of the conditions of the Belfast school children or the question of ventilation, or other questions affecting the schools. It is a well-known fact—speaking for the city for one of the divisions of which I have the honour to represent—that this city of Dublin has an unenviable notoriety for its infantile and child mortality. It is the housing question that is the imperative question as regards dealing with these children; but
as you, Sir, have said, that is not the immediate question before the House, which is the question of medical treatment of these children. I have made it my business to ask the medical officer in Dublin to send me a short report on this question. This is what he says:
The medical inspection of school children is absolutely essential in the interests of the public health. Children at the school age are at a critical period of life and unless they are properly looked after they cannot be expected to develop into healthy citizens. If the system of inspection was in operation children suffering from lung disease, ringworm, sore eyes, skin diseases, and other maladies, would be prevented from being placed in close juxtaposition with healthy children, and their diseases medically treated. The examination and attention to teeth would be most beneficial. Children affected with rickets and other abnormalities would also be attended to. The medical officer inspecting schools would, in the course of his visits, learn of the illness of absent children, and the homes of such children could be visited in order to see that proper treatment was being given.
In England, in centres where the system of inspection is in operation, the health of the school children has been proved to have been much improved.
He appends to that report a statement that last year there were 1,117 deaths of infants under one year, and that between the age of one year and five years there were 936 deaths, and between five years and fifteen years 470 deaths.
Those of us who know something of the psychology of our country know that in dealing with our public, if you were to make this simply permissive, there would be very great difficulty indeed in dealing with the matter; for this reason: if in one area the guardians of the public welfare were to put this in operation so far as they could, and the people in another district had not been compelled to comply with these conditions, these latter would regard themselves as in a peculiar position, and it would start an invidious distinction which we all know is most desirable we should not have. I am myself acquainted with the appalling condition of Dublin. We have heard a great deal in the last few weeks about Cologne. I think it was Byron who said that in the city of Cologne there were thirty distinct odours. I would undertake to say that any person who is blessed with a good sense of smell could discover a great many more than thirty in the city of Dublin. If you are walking through some of the streets you would prefer to take to the middle of the road rather than remain on the footpath. These conditions being such as they are, what is the use of talking
about what happens in the schools? It is the awful conditions under which the children live. Some of us have seen these unfortunate children in the streets of Dublin trying to sell the newspapers and miserably clad in rags. We would, I think, be absolutely lacking in sympathy if we did not do all in our power to improve the health of the children. I feel most strongly that I should be lacking in my duty if, speaking on behalf of the constituency that I have the honour to represent, I did not say that I feel certain that it is their wish that I should support, with all force possible, this Bill. I do so at the same time supporting the request which has made that the Attorney-General for Ireland and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who have introduced this Bill, will be able to see their way to make it mandatory. If it were made mandatory there is no doubt about it the result upon the health of our children would be at once apparent. With all the emphasise that I can command I desire to support this Bill.

Mr. DEVLIN: I have on many different occasions, both by questions in the House and otherwise, endeavoured to attract the attention of the Government—and different Governments—to the necessity of dealing with this question. It seems to me, however, a very strange thing that, notwithstanding the continuous representations which we have made from these benches, that the Government have never taken this matter in hand until now. I confess it is a rather extraordinary circumstance that on the eve of the introduction of a new Ministry of Health for Ireland, when a new health authority is to be set up, that the Government should come along and introduce a measure dealing with what necessarily must be one of the vital purposes of such a Ministry as that which is about to be established. I should like to join with my hon. Friend opposite in asking why this Bill is introduced now, and why the purposes of the Bill should not be incorporated in the new health proposals submitted to Parliament for Ireland? In my judgment one of the first things that the new Ministry of Health would do in Ireland would be to set up an entirely new medical organisation. One of the greatest functions of the establishment of such a medical organisation ought to be to see to the health of the children both in and out of schools. To start a new system of
rating and taxation for this purpose will, in my opinion, create very serious trouble and irritation in Ireland. The medical men appointed by the Ministry of Health could examine the children in the schools, and they could be paid from the finances for the work this Bill proposes to do. They would be paid by the State. I quite agree that in a good many matters of this sort, if they are not compulsory, they are hardly worth doing at all. Compulsion, however, is a very serious matter. This Bill not only proposes to make it compulsory on the children to be examined, but it makes it a penal offence if the parents of the children do not pay the rate for the purposes stated in the Bill. I altogether object to that. I say the way to deal with this thing is to leave it until the proposed Ministry of Health Bill is before the House, until the Public Health Department has been set up, and to include in the functions of the medical men, who are the State doctors, the very important work of the examination of the children and the fostering of their health. Finally, in dealing with a question of this sort I have dealt with it in such a way as to cause the least possible irritation in the various localities throughout the country.

Sir E. CARSON: For my own part I must say I am very glad the Government have introduced this Bill. I think, indeed, it is a curious commentary upon the way business is conducted in this House in relation to Ireland that this very provision has been in force in this country for twelve years, and that notwithstanding, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Belfast has just said, the frequency with which the matter has been brought to the attention of the authorities in Ireland. This is a very small part of what is necessary for education in Ireland. I would not be at liberty, under the Rules of the House, to go into the question of the condition of affairs in relation to elementary education in Ireland at the present time, but I am free to admit that I believe that it is one of the biggest scandals existing in administration in any part of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman who has just addressed us thinks that the provisions of this Bill ought to be included in the Health Bill. May I remind him that the Health Bill is purely a machinery Bill! It does nothing except set up the organisation of an office, and it is the duty of that office afterwards to take care to propose, in the
way of legislation and administration, such matters as may be necessary to promote health in Ireland. I, therefore, think the Government have taken the right course in bringing in this very belated Bill for this one specific subject. I must, however, add my protest against the Bill being permissive. We have in relation to Ireland that permissive principle in almost every Bill that has reference to public health and with which the local authorities are connected—the Notification of Diseases Act, the Notification of Tuberculosis, and various Acts of that kind. These are all permissive, and they are, practically, except in a few rare instances, entirely set at nought in Ireland by the local authorities. I feel I might very well prophesy, having regard to what has taken place, that if you leave this Bill permissive, as it now is, over the greater part of Ireland it will never be enforced at all. I hope when we come to Committee—I suppose it will go upstairs—whoever is on the Committee will urge the Government to make the Bill mandatory. I have not looked at it myself, but I believe it is mandatory in England. If it is mandatory in England I cannot see why it should not be made so in Ireland.
My own opinion is that any local authority which neglects and will, after they have obtained this power, neglect this very elementary duty towards the school children is not fit really to exist at all as a local authority. As to the question of enforcing payment for treatment given, I really think it is not worth while for the Government to maintain that Section. If you look at the Section it says that the local authorities are to estimate the cost of treatment, and then have to enter into an investigation as to the ability of the parent to pay. There can be nothing more invidious than a comparison of this sort between two children sitting side by side, day after day, in an elementary school, or in any other school, and the one saying to the other, "Oh, your father is better able to pay than mine, and you have got medical treatment for nothing, whereas my father has had to pay for it," or a dialogue of that kind. It really is not worth it. I should like to ask this once more: the moment you compel children to go to school, as you do under existing legislation, why are you to provide at the public expense teachers, books, and the general organisation of education, and not include this medical part? I myself see no distinction between procuring education
for the children and procuring what is necessary to make it effective. Surely the question of health adds greatly to the powers of the children to benefit from the education! The moment you say that the school ought to be sanitary and hygienic, and we are very far from that in Ireland, then everything should be done to make the course of education medically consistent, and to do the thing in such a way so that the child will be kept fit and get the greatest possible benefit. I hope the Government will consider whether they might not strike out what is, I think, an invidious and unnecessary Clause in the Bill.
May I add this one general observation as to the existing state of elementary education in Ireland? You will never make any advance there until you proceed to put the cost upon the rates. You made very little advance in this country until you put the cost upon the rates. Therefore, it is that I support this matter being put upon the rates, and everything connected with it being put upon the rates. I know there are people in Ireland who imagine, the moment you say you are going to put a matter of this sort upon the rates, that there will arise the sectarian question. For my own part, I would give each religion anything they ask for in this respect. Until you get education in Ireland put upon the rates you will never get any improvement either as regards the accommodation in the schools or the sanitary condition of them. However I am glad even for this small beginning, and I assure my hon. and learned Friend that not only will I support the Bill, but I intend shortly to ask the Government for a day to discuss the whole question of elementary education in Ireland, having regard to the recent Report of the Vice-regal Commission.

Major NEWMAN: This is a small Bill, but I regard it as very important, because it is the beginning of putting the cost of education on the rates in Ireland, and until that is done we cannot have efficiency in education. In the part of Ireland with which I am associated I believe this small measure will do a great deal of good. I know you cannot expect for a long time to get such splendid school buildings as you have in this country, but we can get near to them, and at any rate in this Bill we can make a beginning. We must, however, make this Bill mandatory and
not permissive, and it must be "shall" and not "may." There is one thing I am doubtful about, and it is the power of the local authorities to exercise the functions provided by this Bill. Surely the authorities to deal with this matter ought to be the small local bodies. Take, as an illustration, the county of Cork, which is about the size of Yorkshire, and it contains some big towns with large populations. The division over which I preside is over twenty miles long, and a good many miles broad, and there must be there at least between fifteen and twenty elementary schools. How is it possible for one county council to look after a great area like that, as he will be required to do under this Bill. With the best intentions in the world I do not think the county councils will be able to carry out these duties. I am not sure that they intend to do this, and they may delegate their powers to various authorities in different parts of the county, or form small sub-committees, but I do think the county councils should undertake the great duties imposed by this Bill.
I would like to know who is going to be the medical officer. Is it going to be the dispensary doctor, and will he have added to his already very exacting duties that of inspecting the schools in his area? If so, he will have to neglect half his patients. I would like to know if a special medical officer is going to be appointed to do these duties, and how is that going to be carried out. I make this suggestion: The county councils ought to have power to delegate their duties to smaller authorities. I should like to see the urban and rural district councils bound to carry out these duties. The next Bill on the Paper is one which is going to make a very radical change in the method of the election of these local authorities under the principle of proportional representation, and I have no hesitation in saying that an Irish local authority elected on that principle will be well able to carry out the duties under this Bill and will carry them out better than a great body like the county council. I suggest that the Attorney-General might insert a Clause giving a county council power to delegate their duties to the urban and rural district council. I heartily support this Bill, but I hope we shall have inserted in it the word "shall" instead of "may."

Mr. DANIEL WILSON: I would like to remind the House that the country councils
really are the bodies who look after taxation and the expenses under this Bill. The rural district councils merely state what is required for their particular district. I think it is quite within the capacity of the county councils to carry out the duties assigned to them under this measure. I would ask the Attorney-General to see that this Bill is changed from "may" to "shall." The English Act of 1907 clearly lays down that it "shall" be the duty of the local authorities. I urge the right hon. Gentleman, however, to do away with the veto contained in the Bill which allows a parent to refuse to allow his child to undergo inspection or treatment. If this provision is left in the advantages which this House expects from this measure will never be obtained by the children of Ireland. In addition to that I would like to point out that there is one Clause which lays down that the authority is to carry out these duties in accordance with regulations made by the Local Government Board with the approval of the Treasury and the approval of the Commissioners for National Education in Ireland. I think the Attorney-General would be wise to see that some provision is put in to make either one or other of these authorities able to determine what rules and regulations shall be made.
With regard to the suggestion relating to medical inspection I do hope that the medical treatment of children in the schools will not be added to the duties of the dispensary doctors, because that would be an absolute absurdity. These dispensary doctors have duties to perform over a very wide area at a miserable salary, and it would be impossible for them to carry out their present duties if they had imposed upon them additional duties of this kind. I think this ought to be a sort of State service. With regard to the suggestion that this Bill should be postponed in some way until the Ministry of Health Bill comes to fruition, I think that would be a mistake. The Ministry of Health Bill as originally drafted simply deals with the position that arose under the Insurance Act, and made the Chief Secretary the head of the insurance instead of the Committee which sat in London. It will have to be greatly amended if we are to have anything like the benefits proposed to be given to England under that Bill. There is no reason why the children in the
elementary schools in Ireland should not have the benefits of this measure, which has the complete assent of all parties.

Mr. MacVEAGH: I look upon this Bill as a long-delayed instalment of the legislation which is due to Ireland. We must not fall into the mistake that this is the first time that the principle of local control has been inserted in measures of this kind, for already we have power for the feeding of school children, and this Bill is merely an extension of that principle. I desire to enter my emphatic dissent from the general sentiment which has been expressed that the time has now come when the whole question of education in Ireland should be placed under local control. It has been said that education should be carried along such lines as would not raise the bogey or spectre of sectarianism, but the course which has been suggested by the hon. Gentleman opposite is the best way of raising the subject of sectarianism all over Ireland.
Catholics constitute three-fourths of the population, and they have not asked for any change in the control of the schools. They have supported their own schools in the past, and contributed their share towards the erection of those schools, and if schools are in a bad condition that is the fault of those who ought to support them. We do not ask those who do not share our religious views to be taxed for the maintenance of our schools, and I fail to see why we should be asked to contribute towards the upkeep of other denominational schools. If denominational education is going to be maintained in Ireland, as it will have to be, then the proper plan is to leave each denomination to provide its own schools and maintain them. We ask for no privilege or right which we do not readily concede to those who differ from us, but I protest against the assumption that there is anything like a general desire for a change in the basis of elementary education in Ireland. I desire also to associate myself most heartily with the protest which has been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division of Belfast (Sir E. Carson) against Sub-section (4) of Clause 1, which says:
There shall be charged to the parent of every child in respect to any medical treatment provided for that child by a local authority under this Act such an amount, not exceeding the cost of the treatment, as may be determined by the local authority.
That is a very invidious proposition. I do not know who suggested it, or what Government Department it emanated from, but it will be bitterly opposed in every part of Ireland. If you are going to compel children to attend schools and give them free education, why should you compel them to receive medical attention, and then make the parents pay for it? It is a very trivial point, and why it was put in at all I cannot understand. It is a cheeseparing proposition, and it is a contemptible little point. The total cost would not amount to £10,000 a year, and yet a special section is introduced to institute prosecutions against the parent and guardians of children in this respect. I hope the. Attorney-General will assure us that this Clause will not be persisted in and that the cost will be borne by the rates or by the Treasury, as I think it ought to be. I do not see why the Treasury should not bear this burden, which is very light, of providing medical treatment. After all it is recognised here that the proper upbringing of the children, and attending to their health in the schools, is one of the most important things a Government could look after. Unless children are healthy and strong they will not make strong and healthy men and women. As the whole amount is so small I hope the Attorney-General will assure us that this objectionable Sub-section will not be persisted in.

Major Viscount DUNCANNON: I desire to join with hon. Members in welcoming this Bill. It has been said that it is a tardy one. That is no reason why our welcome should be any less sincere or cordial. I feel as strongly as every Member from Ireland who has spoken that the first Clause should be turned from a permissive into a mandatory Clause, and I hope very much when the Bill goes upstairs that the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the measure will bear in mind the very strong feeling that has been expressed in the House this afternoon upon that point. It may be said, of course, that in Ireland we are not very rich in doctors, but after all the duty of inspection as set out in this Bill is not a very onerous one. I rise, however, rather for the purpose of pointing out one thing with regard to the Clause charging to the parent the cost of the treatment. The Bill is practically copied from a measure passed in 1907. I wish it had been more completely copied at the beginning of Clause 1. It is quite true that Clause 4
was not included in the Education Administrative Provisions Act, 1907, and that for two years no such charge was made in England, but the omission was found to be a serious one, and in 1909 an Act was passed to provide for the recovery by the local education authority of the cost of the medical treatment of children, and this Clause is an exact copy of Section 1 of that measure. Therefore, when the hon. Member who has just addressed the House says that it is not only a trivial matter but that it is an invidious matter, he uses an argument which will hardly hold water, because since 1909 a similar charge has been made in this country. The charge, I think, is exactly similar as in the case of the Provision of Meals Act, and I do not think that the people of this country consider that an invidious charge. It may even be said that parents do not find it inconvenient that meals should be provided on their behalf instead of by themselves direct. I hope, therefore, that this Clause will remain in the Bill. I would only add that I support the Bill very warmly, and trust that the first Clause will be altered to turn the "may" into "shall."

Captain REDMOND: With every other representative from Ireland I am in total accord with the general purpose and principle of this Bill. The position taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for the Falls Division of Belfast (Mr. Devlin) in regard to this measure should not be misunderstood. A few hon. Members who have succeeded him in addressing the House seem to be labouring under a slight misapprehension. When we say that we would prefer this Bill to have been postponed, we mean that we think, as has been only too well exemplified by our constant pressure here for many years, that this question should not be dealt with here and now, but that it should be embodied in a complete and independent measure dealing with the public health of Ireland. It is perfectly true, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division of Belfast (Sir E. Carson) has said, that the present measure is merely a Bill dealing with machinery, and we want a great, complete and independent measure dealing with the whole of the question of the public health of Ireland. We asked for that on the occasion of the introduction of the Public Health Bill, just as Scottish Members desired that Scotland
should be left outside its purview. Unfortunately we were not quite so successful. The Government made the excuse that it would entail bringing in two Bills, but now they have brought in a Bill which deals only with a very small portion of the problem. So far as the first Clause is concerned, I desire to associate myself with the hon. Member for Dublin (Sir M. Dockrell) in his remarks with regard to it being made compulsory. I quite agree that there is no use whatever in bringing in the Bill if it is not made mandatory. At the same time, I do not believe that Clause 4, which has been subjected to very damaging criticism, should be allowed to stand. It has been said by the Noble Lord who spoke last (Viscount Duncannon) that it should be allowed to stand, because it was found necessary to introduce a similar Clause in an English measure, but I am afraid he left us somewhat in the dark—he certainly did me—as to why it was necessary to make this change. He certainly gave the House no reason, and even if it did prove necessary to make the alteration as regards England, I do not accept that as any reason why we should be treated in a similar manner in Ireland. I desire especially to associate myself with the hon. and learned Member opposite (Mr. D. Wilson), who advocated the taking over by the State of the system of dispensary doctors in Ireland. I agree with him that the condition of the dispensary service in Ireland is deplorable, and that it should be raised into a great State service. If it were raised into a State service it would be beneficial not only to the doctors themselves but especially to the general public of Ireland, and then under that State service and under the Ministry of Health Department in Ireland this proposal that we are now discussing would find its proper place. That is why, though not by any means opposed to the principle of this measure, I am in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for the Falls Division of Belfast in thinking that it would have been better if it had been brought beore the House in another way.

5.0 P.M.

Mr. O'GRADY: This is another example, as it seems to me, of the tinkering way in which this House is constantly dealing with legislation affecting Ireland. Although I am one of those who welcomed the introduction of the measure, I would rather have waited until we could have had a more comprehensive Bill. The
title of the Bill does not square with the Clauses. The title simply refers to the medical treatment of the children of Ireland. It says nothing about inspection. I do not wish to raise a point of order upon this particular phraseology, but it seems to me that Bills of this character have been ruled out of order on much simpler grounds. I rise on behalf of the party with which I am associated to ask the Government to make this Bill mandatory. We have had enough of this permissive legislation. I do not think there is room for Bills regarding our elementary school system and the medical treatment and inspection of children to be permissive at all, and I therefore add my voice to what has been said already on this matter. The Noble Lord opposite (Viscount Duncannon) hopes that Clause 4 will remain in the Bill because there is a similar clause in a Bill affecting the medical treatment of children in the elementary schools of England. I hope that it will be cut out of the Bill, because it is fundamentally and absolutely vicious, and I hope that the Members with whom I am associated will take care to see that the Clause is cut out of the English Act. It is bad in that Act, and it is doubly bad in an Act applying to Ireland. I trust before the Bill goes upstairs that the Minister will give the House an assurance on those two points: First, that the Bill will be made mandatory; and, secondly, that this entirely vicious Clause will be cut out. There is another Clause in the Bill which I do not like. The Bill, in Clause 1, deals with the medical inspection and treatment of children. I want to know how that is going to be done. An hon. Friend behind me suggests that a board will be set up in Ireland to deal with the question and to make appointments to effectively grapple with it, but as far as I can see there is no provision for any machinery of that kind at all. How are you going to treat the children when they get to school? Sub-section 3 of Clause 1 prevents the child being treated at all. There is no obligation on the parent to submit his child to medical inspection. I am very much afraid you cannot dissociate the two things, and clearly if you are going to insist on the medical treatment of children at school you cannot cut that adrift from the medical treatment of children at home; some provision must be made to secure the continuation in the home of that treatment. I have a word to say too about expenses.
I hope that matter will be considered in no small pettifogging manner. The children of the country ought to be made a great asset of the country. Upon their growing up healthy and strong largely depends whether the country will be prosperous in the future, and therefore I submit that such matters as the medical treatment of children should be provided at the expense of the nation and that the burden should not be imposed on the rates. On the whole, I welcome the Bill, small as it is, and I hope we shall get satisfactory assurances from the Minister in charge on the two points I have mentioned.

Mr. SAMUELS: I think the Government have every reason to be very well satisfied with the reception accorded to this Bill this evening. I notice that most of the Members who have spoken have asked that the Bill should be on the same lines as the legislation for England. I would explain why the words in this Bill are not the same as those in the English Act. The whole of the legislation dealing with these matters in the case of Ireland has up to the present been permissive. It has been pointed out in the course of the Debates which we have had on the Ministry of Health Bill how entirely undesirable that is and how very unsatisfactory it has proved in its working, as well as the great necessity that exists for introducing a real Ministry of Health Bill for Ireland. The Government have, indeed, such a proposal under consideration. If legislation of this kind is to be mandatory, it is well to ask what machinery we have at present in existence to enable its enforcement. An hon. and gallant Member objected to the county council being the health authority for this particular purpose, but we have had two Commissions—the Viceregal Commission and the Poor Law Commission—which have both pointed out the great desirability of handing over matters affecting the public health to the county councils, so as to enable the legislation to be enforced for the county as a whole by means of full-time, well-paid officials. We are now discussing upstairs the question of the Ministry of Health Bill, and it is proposed to set up in Ireland a body which will have to deal with this very question and to advise the Chief Secretary. Clearly the first duty of that body will be to consider the principles, scope, and character of the legislation to be introduced.

Sir E. CARSON: If it is only to be an advisory board, you may as well drop it.

Mr. SAMUELS: Its first duty will be to consider how such a measure as this can be carried out. If you make it mandatory, you will have to set up in each county a new medical authority, and you will have to consider whether the present county councils, many of which are moribund, are the proper bodies to make the appointments for the new medical authority. Under the Bill I shall have to introduce shortly new county councils will have to be set up which will deal with these matters, and these are the reasons which have impressed upon the Government the view that it would be better in introducing this Bill to keep it on the same permissive lines as the rest of Irish legislation. But if, as appears to be the case, there is an absolutely unanimous desire in all parts of the House that the Bill should be mandatory, I will take care to represent to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary—who regrets very much he is unable to be present to-day to deal with this measure—the strong expressions of opinion which he have had here, and I hope when the Bill goes upstairs we shall be in a position to give such an answer as will meet the views of the House.

Mr. DEVLIN: If the right hon. Gentleman has no machinery to make it mandatory, how can the right hon. Gentleman do it?

Mr. SAMUELS: He may or may not think it desirable to appoint new officers to deal with this question.

Sir E. CARSON: Is there anything mandatory upon the county councils? If there is a mandatory provision at all, is there any way of carrying it out? Otherwise, what is the use of setting them up, or any other body; you would have just the same difficulty?

Mr. SAMUELS: The matter can be discussed in Committee. I have undertaken to bring it before the Chief Secretary, who will between now and the Committee stage consider it in all its bearings. As the Bill now stands it is a permissive measure. I hope next year all our legislation for Ireland will be placed on a more satisfactory footing. Attention has been called to Sub-section (3) of Clause 1 which provides that, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as imposing any obligation on a parent to submit his child to medical
inspection or treatment." That Clause is taken from the Act of 1909. When that Act was under consideration very strong objection was raised to the compulsory inspection of children in England, and it has therefore been thought desirable to insert this provision in this Bill and allow the matter to be fully discussed in Committee. On Sub-section (4) I have to say that that also is taken from the Act of 1909 and I shall take care to represent to my right hon. Friend the very strong expressions of views which we have had in the course of this Debate. I will also endeavour, before we get into Committee, to see how this provision in actual practice works out in England, and whether there is any enforcement of this particular Clause making parents pay where it is supposed that they are in a position to do so. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division of Belfast has suggested that it is not worth while, and that point will also be considered. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Down (Mr. Wilson) also made a suggestion with regard to the rules. I can only say that I do not think there will be any difficulty in making rules for carrying out the provisions of the Act, which is to be read as one with the Public Health Acts. I hope the measure will be read a second time, on the understanding that the representations which have been put forward shall be fully considered before the Bill is dealt with in Committee.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. SAMUELS: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
This is a Bill of considerable importance for the local government of Ireland in the future. It has become necessary on account of the fact that the Suspensory Acts, 1916, 1917, and 1918, which have prolonged the existence of the local authorities, will expire in a short time, and we have to consider the question what local authorities are to administer the various Acts which are in existence in Ireland. The last election for the
county councils were held in June, 1914, and those for the urban communities in January, 1915. Some of the members of these bodies are therefore five years over their time and a great many are three years over.

Sir E. CARSON: Is it not the same in England?

Mr. SAMUELS: Yes.

Mr. MacVEAGH: And it was the same with the last Parliament.

Mr. SAMUELS: Under the Local Government Act, 1898, there were thirty-three county councils in Ireland, each having about twenty-one members. The electorate varied in the different counties from something like 2,000 voters up to 10,000 in the county of Cork. Each county is divided into electoral divisions, each returning one member by direct vote. The rural electoral districts return two members by direct vote. There are a very large number of rural divisions, and each rural district councillor is also a guardian of the poor. In some cases there are urban and rural districts combined in one Poor Law union, and the result of the present system of election is that these authorities are constituted of fifty, seventy, one hundred, and (in the case of Dublin) 137 members, far too large a number to do business in any energetic and thorough manner. It is proposed in the Bill that rural district councils shall be reduced by half the number, and that where there is an amalgamated union it shall be reduced by one-half or by some reasonable number which will correspond to the requirements of the particular union. There are eleven municipal boroughs in Ireland, and for those boroughs the elections take place on the 15th January in each year. The elections for the counties take place in June each year. There are six county boroughs—Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford. They are divided into wards. In the City of Dublin each ward returns one alderman and three councillors; there are twenty wards, and the corporation consists of eighty members. In Belfast there are fifteen wards, each returning one alderman and three councillors, with a corporation of sixty members. Limerick has eight wards, each returns one alderman and four councillors. In Cork each of the seven wards returns two aldermen and six councillors. In Londonderry and Waterford, each with five wards, each ward returns two alder-
men and six councillors. There are five boroughs—Clonmel, Drogheda, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Sligo, each with three wards, each returning two aldermen and six councillors.

Sir E. CARSON: Are these under Acts of Parliament?

Mr. SAMUELS: Yes, they are all adapted from the Local Government Act. In addition to that there are urban districts, not being boroughs, which are divided into district electoral divisions. There are towns with town commissioners, and they are divided into wards or electoral areas as the case may be. All these representatives have hitherto been returned by direct representation. The effect has not been satisfactory in a great portion of Ireland. The ratepayer, in his capacity as ratepayer, has practically not been represented in large districts on either the county council or on the corporations, district councils, or boards of guardians. Almost everywhere it is politics, and politics alone, that have succeeded in winning the local government elections over the greater part of the country.

Mr. DEVLIN: Does that not apply to England?

Mr. SAMUELS: We have not the same amount of gradations in Ireland that we have in England. Political tenets, unfortunately, in Ireland, over a great portion of the country, have under the former system not corresponded with substantial interest or zeal for economy in local administration.

Mr. DEVLIN: Which portion?

Mr. SAMUELS: In certain of the towns, for instance, where the house is let in tenements—which is an evil we have to deal with largely in many cases in Ireland—where the rating is under £4, the lessor pays all the rates, and all the inhabitants of the tenement houses have the vote. The result has been that in portions of some of these boroughs the great body of the electors have no real interest in checking the raising or method of administration of the rates so far as they tend towards efficiency or economy. There has been great extravagance and great mismanagement, and in several of the towns they have created, for the purpose of trying to watch the operations of these bodies, what are called ratepayers' associations.

Mr DEVLIN: Have they not to do that in England?

Mr. SAMUELS: In Ireland it has not had very much effect. Take the case of Dublin. There the rates were 12s. in 1908 and 13s. in 1914. This year they have risen to something like 16s. 11d.

Mr. MacVEAGH: What are they in West Ham—14s.?

Mr. SAMUELS: From the civic point of view there has been a great need for some method, if possible, of getting persons returned, I do not say on political grounds at all, but in the interest of the welfare, prosperity, and commercial interests of the cities. It is also a matter of the greatest importance to the State, which has advanced very large sums upon the security of the rates, that there should be the best possible form of local government body representing the ratepayers. Millions of money have been advanced and millions more will have to be advanced in the immediate future, and great obligations will be imposed upon the local bodies for carrying out schemes of housing, education and health, which we hope will soon be entrusted to their keeping. Considering the whole position, the Government have come to the conclusion, in view of the dissatisfaction which largely prevails in the country, that a system of proportional representation should be introduced for Ireland. I may say that when that was announced it was welcomed almost universally by the Press all through the country. I do not think there is any opposition, at any rate any responsible opposition, put forward by the Irish Press.

Mr. DEVLIN: The "Belfast Evening Telegraph."

Mr. SAMUELS: I was not aware of that.

Notice taken of the fact that forty Members were not present; House counted, and forty Members being found present—

Mr. JOHN JONES: Are you going to charge overtime for this?

Mr. SAMUELS: The Government in the circumstances propose to introduce the principle of proportional representation for these local elections in Ireland. It was almost universally welcomed by the whole of the Irish Press. There was in
Ireland one instance last year of an election for a local body under proportional representation which certainly proved a perfect success. That was the case of the borough of Sligo. Sligo is a very ancient borough which had been reduced practically to a state of bankruptcy. Certain seizures were made under judgments against the property of the corporation and they had to come to Parliament for the purpose of seeing what could be done to restore their position. A Private Bill was introduced at the instance of the Corporation, with the consent of the people of Sligo, in which this principle of proportional representation was embodied. Sligo was divided into three wards, each returning two aldermen and six councillors, and an election was held under the principle of proportional representation on a most important matter. It is generally put forward with regard to proportional representation that except in the case of highly intelligent and educated communities it would be very difficult to carry it out in effect.

Mr. MacVEAGH: That was the only argument against it in England.

Mr. SAMUELS: At any rate, the election in Sligo proved a complete success. There was in the three wards a well-balanced return, and all parties were represented. I believe the Corporation of Sligo as it is now is one which has met with the thorough approval of the citizens of that important town. It will be said, I am perfectly sure, that one swallow does not make a summer, but, at all events, one swallow is always the harbinger of spring. A reasoned Amendment has been put down by the hon. Member for Canterbury and several other hon. Members who object to the introduction of this Bill for Ireland on the ground that it does not prevail in relation to Great Britain. I do not know about Great Britain, but this system does not prevail in what may be called Greater Britain. In Scotland, for education purposes, the local bodies are elected on this principle of proportional representation, and I am informed on the highest authority from Scotland that the result has been that a first-class set of candidates has come forward, men who would otherwise not have come forward at all. Therefore it has had the excellent effect already that men who hitherto have refrained from such affairs,
because they thought they would be plunged into politics or would only be elected on party grounds, have come forward in a real public spirit and with the expectation that their abilities as educationists will be fully considered by the electorate under the new system. So when it is said that this is introducing for Ireland something that does not exist in Great Britain, it is inaccurate. It does exist in the system of election for local bodies in relation to the education authorities in Scotland. But if Parliament thinks a new method of election or any other new system or any reform is desirable for Ireland, I do not see why it should wait upon England or Scotland. My view of the United Kingdom is that it ought to be the United Kingdom of Ireland and Great Britain, and I should like to see it in the van of progress in these matters. I believe this system will be a progressive one. It will give an opportunity to the people in Ireland to express their feelings in matters like these free from the fear that it will be cutting against their party interests. The privilege of giving a second, third or fourth preference is something which will very often influence a man, and he will think out the matter for himself and not be bound to vote the party ticket. These are the circumstances under which the Government is introducing proportional representation. I received a letter this morning from a person in the very highest position in Ireland, who has, perhaps, the best possible opportunity of any man in the country for knowing what the state of feeling is in regard to such a measure, and this is what he writes:—
I have never known any Bill which has received such wide support from all sections of the Press and the people as this one. Indeed, men of all classes, politics and religions are convinced of the urgent necessity of the measure.

Sir E. CARSON: Might I ask his name?

Mr. SAMUELS: Sir Henry Robinson, President of the Local Government Board, and there is no man in Ireland who has a better opportunity of judging the state of feeling. I have also received a letter from a gentleman in the South of Ireland. I will not mention his name.

Sir E. CARSON: If you read it you must lay it on the Table.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley): I must remind the right hon. Gentleman that if he quotes from a document for
the purposes of argument he is liable to be called upon to produce the whole document.

Mr. SAMUELS: I shall not read the document. But I have received several letters from correspondents in different towns who say they are very anxious that the Bill should be introduced and they believe it would introduce a new spirit altogether in the method of elections.
To deal with the Bill itself, it is only in the case of an election for the full number of members that the proportional representation system will be introduced. There will be as few changes as possible introduced into the system of local government by the Bill. Under existing provisions relating to elections casual vacancies are filled by co-option in county and rural district councils. They are filled in the case of Boroughs by an election held for the particular place, and it is not intended to interfere with that system. In the case of casual vacancies co-option will still exist under the previous Acts, and in the case of vacancies in boroughs or urban constituencies there will have to be elections. It is intended to reduce the number of members of boards of guardians and rural district councils. They are much too large. Power is given to the Local Government Board, as has been given under the provisional Local Government Acts and the Franchise Act, for the purpose of defining the electoral areas as far as necessary. The intention is to interfere as little as possible with existing wards or divisions of that character, but it is necessary for the Local Government Board to define particular areas for the purpose of proportional representation, because, of course, it will be necessary to group electoral districts. In defining the local electoral areas and assigning members thereto the Board will, as far as practicable, secure
that the total number of members of any local authority other than a rural district council or board of guardians shall not be altered; that the number of members assigned to the local electoral areas shall in each case be such as to give equal representation upon the basis of population; that the number of members assigned to any local election area shall not be more than nine nor less than three. Except, so far as is necessary for the purpose of forming local electoral areas, nothing in this section shall affect any existing district electoral divisions, or the powers of the Local Government Board with respect thereto.
The Local Government Board has authority over the whole matter only as far as
practicable to deal with it as far as may be necessary for mapping out these different areas, and it is necessary that they shall form such areas as shall not have less than three nor more than nine members.

Sir E. CARSON: Does that apply to rural councils?

Mr. SAMUELS: Yes.

Sir E. CARSON: And county councils?

Mr. SAMUELS: Yes, it applies to all. The reason the number nine is decided upon is that in some cities—Cork, Londonderry, and Waterford—there are eight representatives in each ward, two being aldermen and six being councillors.

Mr. MacVEAGH: May we assume that all the wards will be retained as at present?

Mr. SAMUELS: That is a matter the Local Government Board will have to deal with themselves. But it is highly improbable that they will be interfered with. All the representatives in rural districts and county council are to go out of office next December. Under ordinary circumstances they would go out in June next, but it will be quite impossible to have all these arrangements made for county councils, rural district councils and guardians, and everything plotted out and ready for a June election. Then it has to be taken into account that we have only one register in Ireland, and there will be a new register in October which will be perfected about the end of November, for appeals generally go to the Court of Appeal at the beginning of November, and by the end of November the new register will be perfect, and it is desirable when you are introducing this measure that the election should take place upon the new basis. The first election will therefore be in December.

An HON. MEMBER: A very bad month.

Mr. SAMUELS: It would not be desirable to hold it up till June, 1920, but possibly it could be arranged in Committee that at any rate elections in future shall take place in June. I think it is desirable, at any rate for this year, that as soon as the register is made there should be an election. The election for the town councils will take place as usual in the beginning of January next year. All
the town councils and all the aldermen and the other elected representatives will go out together and there will be a general election for rural and urban purposes. For the future the tenure will be three years. At present aldermen hold office for six years, but it is proposed that the tenure of aldermen shall be in the same position as that of other councillors for the future, and the intention is that the first two elected for a ward under the system of proportional representation shall be returned as aldermen and the others shall be returned as councillors.
Power is taken in Clause 7 whereby if default is made by local authorities in performing their statutory duty the Local Government Board may by Order appoint some person to discharge the duty of the council or the commissioners, or such of those duties as may be specified in the Order, and after the making of such an Order, as long as it is in force, the powers and duties of the councillors or commissioners shall be discharged by the person who is thus appointed. That is a similar provision to one which is to be introduced into the Housing Act for England. It has become necessary, in the opinion of the Government, to be prepared for an attempt to make local government impossible. It has been publicly announced by politicians in Ireland that they intend to make local government impossible, and this Clause provides that if such an attempt is made it shall not prevail. There are powers at present for dealing with the case of the neglect of roads or sewage and one or two other matters under the Public Health Act, by which the Local Government Board can appoint persons to carry out those duties, and there used to be a power relating to boards of guardians who might be suspended and their duties discharged altogether by persons appointed by the Local Government Board, and it had to be resorted to. Now that immense powers with regard to housing and health—far greater powers than have hitherto existed, are going to be entrusted to local authorities, it is most important that the public bodies charged with these great duties shall carry them out and shall not be in a position to abdicate their functions, and create a local anarchy.
The Bill which I am now proposing will read together with the other Local Government Acts for Ireland, and we
hope the House will read it a second time to-day and that it will be passed into law as speedily as possible. I do not presume to say that we come here with an exaggerated anticipation as to what will happen under the provisions for proportional representation, but we have every reason to hope and believe that, with regard to the particular conditions of Irish public life, and to the particular antagonisms which exist and the gaps that prevail in the different classifications of electors in Ireland, that the introduction of this new method will give new hope, vitality and life to the public administration in Ireland. With that object in view, and almost with that assurance, we bring forward the Bill and ask the House to read it a second time.

Mr. J. JONES: Is it possible to introduce the word "Great Britain" in the title of the Bill?

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: It would be an unusual procedure to extend an Irish Bill to Great Britain. I do not say it is impossible, but I would like to see the proposal first.

Major O'NEILL: I beg to move to leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words,
this House declines to proceed with a Bill which, by establishing proportional representation as the basis of local elections in Ireland, introduces a principle of election in Ireland different from that prevailing in Great Britain.
I feel I must draw attention to the fact that on the Second Reading of a Bill of the importance and magniture of this one, that the Chief Secretary is not in his place.

Mr. SAMUELS: The Chief Secretary regrets very much that he has been called to Ireland on urgent business. He had hoped very much to be here.

Major O'NEILL: I quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman has very good reasons for being absent, but surely the Government could have arranged that a Bill of this importance should have been read a second time, when the Chief Secretary was able to be here! I do not intend to go into details of the arguments for or against proportional representation. My hon. Friend who will second this Motion will do that, as I understand he has made a particular study of the subject. The whole of this question was covered in detail in the last Parliament. Numbers
of Debates took place on the Representation of the People Act on the question of proportional representation.

Mr. A. WILLIAMS: Not for municipal purposes.

Major O'NEILL: For Parliamentary purposes, and on every occasion that system as a principle of election was defeated. It was introduced for Parliamentary elections, but I cannot see why if it is good for municipal elections it should not be good for Parliamentary elections. I confess that I do not fully understand the principle of proportional representation.

Sir E. CARSON: Neither do I.

Major O'NEILL: When I was present in this House the year before last and the matter went to a Division I voted against proportional representation together with the majority of this House. So far as I understand it in theory, the principle is excellent. It apparently provides that if you elect people to an assembly they should be represented in that assembly in exact proportion to the number of electors of the different parties who returned them. That is what proportional representation is in theory, but in practice, so far as I understand it, it has on every occasion on which it has been tried proved unsuccessful.

Captain REDMOND: Has the hon. and gallant Gentleman made himself acquainted with the election in Sligo?

Major O'NEILL: I have. The question of Sligo was also referred to by the right hon. Gentleman. I do not know anything about politics in Sligo, and I do not know whether the present Sligo municipal body is any better than the last one. I am told it probably is.

Captain REDMOND: It is more representative.

Major O'NEILL: My point about Sligo is that Sligo is an isolated question. It was one case only, whether it be successful or not. One of the very first principles which I learned at school was never to argue from a particular to a general principle, because if you do it is a fallacy. Because Sligo has been a success—if it is a success; we do not know yet—that is absolutely no ground for basing an argument in favour of applying proportional representation on the large and sweeping scale which is proposed by this Bill.
There is another point about Sligo, and that is that the electors of Sligo were consulted before proportional representation for them was brought in. It was they who promoted the private Bill in this House, and that surely is a very different state of affairs from the one which exists at present as regards Ireland in connection with this Bill. We on these benches object to being experimented upon in connection with this question. The whole thing is an experiment, and in my opinion it is particularly unsuitable to the election of local government bodies, whatever it may be in regard to Parliamentary bodies. Surely, in regard to a man who is a member of a county council or a rural district council, or any other local body, it is more vital in his case than in that of a Member of Parliament that he should be in close personal daily touch with the electors who returned him. That is utterly impossible under any system of proportional representation. On the merits of the case I am inclined to be against proportional representation. At any rate, I would say that it is surely better for us to retain a system which we know than to embark upon some other system the details of which we do not know and which are open to suspicion in practice. My objection to this Bill would be very largely removed, or at any rate I should look upon it from a different point of view if it were applied to the whole of the United Kingdom. That is the real basis of the opposition which we on these benches propose to give to this Bill. It seeks to impose upon us differential treatment, and we do not see why we should be made the subject of this experiment. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] Would the hon. Member like his particular constituency to be made the subject of this particular experiment?

An HON. MEMBER: I was elected on proportional representation.

Major O'NEILL: The hon. Member is presumably a Member for a university. I did not know that. That, to my mind, was a very special case included in the last Bill, and it was quite outside the main argument for proportional representation on a large scale. I should oppose any measure which seeks to differentiate either in favour of or against the part of the country which I represent. I should oppose equally a measure introduced to halve the Income Tax in Ulster. I do not see why the people of the North
of Ireland should be subject to special and different treatment from those of Great Britain. What we desire is the same treatment and the same measures as those applied to other parts of the United Kingdom.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Why do you want a special Education Bill for Belfast?

6.0 P.M.

Major O'NEILL: I do not. I should like to see an Education Bill for the whole of Ireland. I want to see Ireland placed on the same basis in regard to education as England. I would like to see the Education Bill which was passed last Session applied to Ireland, and the advantages which it gives to English children applied to Ireland, or, at any rate, to that part of Ireland which I represent. The question of the Education Bill which was passed last Session is itself a strong instance of what I was saying. That Bill did not apply to Ireland. Take another Bill. The Reform Bill of two years ago as introduced did not apply to Ireland, and subsequently, but only in face of the most bitter opposition from the party, which was then a party considerable in numbers, represented by hon. Gentlemen opposite, the Redistribution Clauses were applied to Ireland. The Health Bill as introduced did not apply to Ireland. We are told that it is going to be made to apply now, but it is doubtful whether the Amendment proposed by the Government will carry the matter very much further.

Mr. DEVLIN: Why did you not accept our suggestion?

Major O'NEILL: The Transport Bill, the Second Reading of which was proposed the other day, applies to Ireland, but a differentiation is set up which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for the Duncairn Division of Belfast (Sir E. Carson) stated in his very convincing speech, does not apply to Ireland in a way which will benefit or facilitate its application at any rate in the North of Ireland. Then the Housing Bill so far does not apply to Ireland. This consistent policy of leaving Ireland out of all beneficial legislation which is carried for other parts of the United Kingdom, is a policy against which we upon these benches desire to enter our most emphatic protest. Not only are we left out of Bills which are for the benefit of England, but now it is proposed to put us into a Bill as to which we have never
been consulted, the main principle of which we do not want, and which it is not suggested ought to be applied to any other part of the United Kingdom. That is most unfair and indefensible conduct on the part of the Government. On this one point I may give the House a very curious instance of very much the same condition of affairs. In another part of Europe, which is leading to a great deal of trouble and difficulty—I refer to the analogy of the province of Catalonia in Spain. I have been to that province and it often struck me that the resemblance of the political position of Catalonia versus the rest of Spain as compared with the political position of Ulster is really so remarkable as to be really quite extraordinary.
To begin with, the province of Catalonia is in the North of Spain, and its largest town, the great city of Barcelona, is in the North-east corner of Spain just as Belfast is in the North-east corner of Ireland. Barcelona is the largest city in Spain. It has the biggest industrial connection and the largest businesses in the whole of Spain. A large number of industries of all kinds are carried on in that city, more particularly textile industries. In fact, I think I am right in saying that the city of Barcelona, and its district, are second only as a textile manufacturing centre in the world to the city of Manchester. It is also a large port. It trades with all parts of the world. It is far and away the largest centre of labour and the labour movement in Spain. That, too, is undoubtedly the case in regard to Belfast. Trade Unionism is more represented in Belfast than in any other city in Ireland. This is a very remarkable parallel, and what Barcelona and the district object to is being dragged at the heels of an unprogressive State. They see in Spain around them all kinds of political intrigue. They see a country with a very strong and somewhat reactionary church, a country which, in many respects, is hostile to reform, and they do not like being dragged at the heels of that country just as in a Bill of this nature we from the North of Ireland do not wish to be dragged at the heels of those who presumably want proportional representation in Ireland, and we say that if it is brought in for any reason at all, the only possible reason for its introduction must be that in some ways it is intended to prevent county councils in the South and West of Ireland from being carried by the Sinn Fein party. Whether that result will be attained is ex-
tremely doubtful; but whether it is or is not, I do say most emphatically that it is not right and not just that those who do not want this measure in the part of the country which I represent should be compelled to accept it simply because other people from other parts of the country may think that it is in their interests that it should be introduced in the parts which they represent. I was reading the other day the Debates on this subject when it came up on the Reform Bill, and in view of the present situation which has arisen in connection with Ireland I was greatly struck by a portion of a speech by Mr. Herbert Samuel, who was then in this House. He was speaking on an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for the Falls Division of Belfast, seeking to introduce proportional representation into the City of Belfast.

Mr. DEVLIN: Not Belfast alone, but Dublin and Cork as well.

Major O'NEILL: Possibly Dublin and Cork as well. I know that it was Belfast, but I will take the hon. Member's assertion that Dublin and Cork were also included. On that Amendment Mr. Herbert Samuel said:
For my part I should like to see the experiment tried in Ireland.
The experiment!
I think it is a misfortune that the experiment was not tried in England in the boroughs.
Of course, the English boroughs would not allow themselves to be experimented on in this way. Then he goes on:
I should like to see it tried somewhere, and if the majority of Irish representatives wish it tried in Ireland I should like to see how it would work in that country.
Do the majority of Irish representatives wish to see this experiment tried in Ireland? I do not know. They are not here to say, but, at any rate, surely we in this House are entitled to go upon what the majority of Irish representatives in this House think about this matter, and the majority of Irish representatives in this House are opposed to the application of the principle of this Bill. A large number of Members from all parts of this House voted against proportional representation when it came up in the Reform Bill Debates, and among them were many members of the present Government. I think that I am right in saying that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House voted against it, at any rate, on one occasion. The right hon. Gentleman
the present Chancellor of the Exchequer not only voted against it, but took a most prominent part in opposition to the principle of proportional representation in the Debates. Last, but not least, perhaps I ought to say—in this case the Vote was given against the Amendment to which I have referred which was moved by the hon. Gentleman opposite—a member of the Government who voted against the principle of proportional representation was no other than my right hon. Friend who is now introducing this Bill.

Mr. DEVLIN: He has a right to turn his coat as well as the rest.

Major O'NEILL: On every occasion when proportional representation came before the House in the Debates on the Reform Bill the question was left to the free, unfettered decision of the House. The Government Whips were not put on, because it was recognised that this is a question which should be left to the unfettered decision of this House. I ask the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill to follow the example which was set by the Leader of the House as short a time ago as the winter of 1917, and, at any rate, if the Government are determined to press the principle of this Bill, I do not see how they can possibly on any system of right or logic refuse to adopt the course which they adopted two years ago and leave the decision to the unfettered decision of the House without putting on the party Whips.

Mr. MOLES: I rise to second the Motion of my hon. and gallant Friend. I oppose this Bill because it sets up, in regard to the rights of citizenship, one standard for Ireland and another for the rest of the United Kingdom. I oppose it also, because no mandate for this measure has been sought or obtained. I oppose it because it seeks to enact a principle which has three times, and always by increasing majorities, been rejected. I oppose it lastly and most of all because the things which are claimed for this system cannot be achieved under it. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced this measure ought to have carried the history of Sligo a great deal further, or he should have said a great deal less about it. I propose to supplement his narrative in some very vital matters. So far back as 1896 the then Sligo Corporation had a rating limit of 8s. 6d. in the £1 imposed upon it by Bill. Then came the Local Government Act, and the
affairs of the Sligo Corporation were carried on under that Act from 1898 to 1903. It passed from one orgy of mismanagement and civic incompetence to another, until so grave a position had arisen in 1903 that the Sligo Corporation, snowed under by an avalanche of debt, sought statutory powers to increase its rating limits, but the long suffering ratepayers rose en masse against the proposal. They formed a citizens' association, and appealed to the Local Government Board to protect them. Mr. Drury, the Local Government Inspector, was sent down to conduct a local government inquiry. The corporation were heard, and the citizens were heard, and the application was absolutely and peremptorily refused by the Local Government Board, who expressly found that with any kind of business capacity in the management of its civic affairs the Corporation of Sligo ought to be perfectly well able to conduct the business of that borough with an 8s. 6d. rate. Things went from bad to worse, and shortly after that inquiry what is known as "Larkinism" struck Sligo as it struck Dublin, and as it struck Cork. It struck it like a devastating fire, and the personnel of the Sligo Council, bad before, became infinitely worse then. Scandal after scandal multiplied until finally the corporation, as the Attorney-General has told you, drifted into hopeless bankruptcy, and could no longer continue. Public proceedings were brought against it in public Court, a sheriffs decree was issued, and the sheriff took possession of the town hall, which was corporation property, and sold by public aution to liquidate the debts of that council the furniture in the town clerk's office. The corporation employés had not been paid their weekly wages and salaries and of course they ceased to work. A huge accumulation of dirt formed on the streets of Sligo. The gas works, having had their bill in common with many others unliquidated, gave notice to the corporation that unless some substantial amount were forthwith paid to their creditors, the town would be put into physical darkness, being already intellectually so. You will see, therefore, that the position is a great deal different from that which the learned Attorney-General has told you, and very different indeed from the document which is being circulated to Members and which purports to disclose the whole position in Sligo. It was not the system of election which broke down in Sligo, it was civic
management that broke down, and the thing that was sought to be remedied was not the electoral system at all, but the class of man who was being returned to the corporation. An hon. and learned Gentleman says "Hear, hear," but I will show that his applause is a little too previous.
When the corporation again sought to promote a Bill, again the ratepayers' association rose in revolt, and the ratepayers' association this time, curious to relate, was representative of every phase of political opinion in Sligo except Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein being the governing voice in the corporation. Nationalist, Independent, bonâ fide labour, all combined to down Sinn Fein. Then the corporation saw that their Bill could not go through in face of this storm of opposition, and they approached the ratepayers' Association. I would call the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend to this. The Ratepayers' Association said, "Yes, we will qualify our opposition so far that we will permit the Bill to go through that will take us out of this morass of debt, disgrace and dishonour, but we demand that a given number of your corporation shall resign their places, and that the Ratepayers' Association shall nominate a given number of members who will be co-opted in their place." That was not proportional representation, and it was because my hon. and learned Friend who applauded just now thought proportional representation was the consequence that he said "Hear, hear." When the Corporation refused to accede to that demand, there was left for them no alternative except to try the hazardous one of proportional representation, and that was carried by a majority vote, and that was how it came into Sligo. I affirm here, with a knowledge of the municipality which I think very few men in this House possess, that under the old system you would have returned all identically but four men returned here, because it was a majority of the ratepayers who achieved the dethronement of Sinn Fein. So much for the example of Sligo. Proportional representation is not a new discovery so far as Ireland is concerned, nor is it a new discovery so far as this House is concerned. As my hon. and gallant Friend (Major O'Neill) has told you, three times this House has discussed this question, and three times rejected it when it was proposed to apply it to England and Scotland. I suppose it
is thought to be just, because it was rejected for the major that it was a necessity for the minor, and if the House has reached a frame of mind like that, I suppose it will agree that practically anything is good enough for Ireland. I had the pleasure and duty of serving upon a very important body known as the Irish Convention, and amongst the multifarious subjects which that body so painstakingly explored was this identical question of proportional representation. The Subcommittee that had it under investigation sat for weeks, discussing the precise problem which is brought before the House by this Bill.

Major NEWMAN: For Parliamentary elections?

Mr. MOLES: For both. If my hon. Friend will look at the document he will see.

Major NEWMAN: I have seen it.

Mr. MOLES: I had the pains of preparing it. The Sub-committee which considered the matter was presided over by his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, whose knowledge of these matters, with very great respect, is second to none in this House. There sat on it an hon. Member for one of the divisions of Tyrone, and one of the leading lights of Sinn Fein and two of the ablest and best members of the Irish Labour party. Not only did they investigate proportional representation, but they investigated also the Belgian system, which is proportional representation plus plural voting, and they investigated every phase of proportional representation. Having investigated it for weeks, and having studied the position in every single county in Ireland, they came unanimously to this conclusion:
Having regard to the smallness of the Unionist electorate in many counties, the proportional representation system would not give representation to the Unionist minority.
I submit that upon that finding by a body of experts proportional representation stands condemned. That Sub-committee brought its recommendations before the Grand Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for the Falls Division (Mr. Devlin) was a member of that Grand Committee, as was the then hon. Member for Waterford, the late Mr. John Redmond. They again subjected all the facts which we had collected and collated to examination, and they again came to the unanimous conclusion that proportional repre-
sentation was wholly ineffective to deal with the Irish position and must break down. Their finding came in turn before the Convention. Every county council in Ireland sent its chairman to represent it upon that Convention, so that you had there thirty-two men, each of whom knew his county individually from A to Z, and they were, in fact, a body of experts such as have never been collected on this question, and possibly may never be collected again. They unanimously, with all their their local knowledge, confirmed the finding of the Sub-committee and Grand Committee, and frankly fell back upon the principle of nomination. More than that, those who have inspired this particular Bill, and whose action the Attorney-General is reflecting, agreed with that verdict, and they know that put to the test the system will break down. This House can very easily apply a test which is purely arithmetical. I will not go through the elaborate system of telling you how the quota is formed, but I will tell you the result. Anybody who knows proportional representation is open to check me if I err. I will take the maximum case of the Attorney-General. You cannot have a larger constituency than nine and you could not conceivably have a larger area than an entire county. An entire county would be absolutely unworkable. No sane county councillor would dream of making an appeal to such a constituency. The thing could not be done. It would be impossible to canvass it, or for the candidate to travel through it and address public meetings, and impossible for a man of limited means to send out circulars to in some cases a constituency with 73,000 voters. No sane man would contemplate such a position. But suppose you had such a position, which is the best for proportional representation, what would happen in a 70,000 constituency, and I take a round figure because it is the more easily examined. With nine members, and a 70,000 constituency, your quota would be 7,001. That really means 10 per cent., or slightly over 10 per cent., of your electorate. Let us see how far you could get with a position like that throughout Ireland. Take the county of Clare, where the Unionist minority is 1.86 per cent. You are seriously putting forward the proposition that proportional representation is going to give representation to 1.86 per cent.

Major NEWMAN: Are not there any Unionist-Catholics in Clare?

Mr. MOLES: There are four, I believe. I wonder whether my hon. and gallant Friend ever heard the saying we have in Ireland, "You might as well look for holy water in an Orange lodge." I go on now to county Kerry, 2.74; county Limerick, 2.92; Tipperary, 5.43; county Waterford, 4.32. I do not care what province you take outside Ulster, your minority is so small that neither proportional representation nor any other elective system will protect them.

Major NEWMAN: Give us Cork city.

Mr. SPEAKER: I must ask the hon. and gallant Member not to keep interrupting. The more he interrupts the less I shall be inclined to call him.

Mr. MOLES: It is also a little unfair to me as a new Member. The figure for Cork county is 8.55, which is the best case that can be made out for proportional representation. In Cork borough it is 11.56. I would have discussed Cork borough without invitation, because unless we are prepared to face all these problems we ought not to come here and condemn proportional representation root and branch. What is the position of Cork borough? The Attorney-General gave us the figures for Cork, and if you will look at those figures you will find that 11 per cent. of them would give you about six members, assuming always that all of your minority voted. But anybody who has experience of municipal or county council elections knows that if you ever achieve 50 per cent. of your electorate you have done a surprising thing, and that is one thing that is nearly always left out of consideration by those who advocate proportional representation. Suppose the best happened in the matter of Cork borough, and you succeeded in obtaining the highest you could hope for, six members out of your sixty, what does that achieve? Does it really and effectively protect the interests of the minority? Of course it does not, and nobody pretends that it does. Fifty-four will vote down six, just as easily as fifty-nine will vote down one. You do not need proportional representation to make your protests vocal. You have had your ratepayers' associations, your public meetings, your chambers of commerce, all joining in an ever-growing chorus of denunciation, and all of them hopelessly ineffective, because, despite the storm that raged round your council, the members inside would go on with their gross mis-
management, voting away vast sums of public money. And you may put six in in Cork borough and ten in in Dublin city, but they will go on doing in Cork and in Dublin what they have been doing, until the great body of the electorate rises above the system that to-day tyrannises over and dominates them and makes an end of it, and puts in men only upon their merits, capable of wisely and properly conducting the business. That you can do just as well under this system as under proportional representation. You can search the entire province of Connaught, and I defy any man to show me how you will elect on one public body in Connaught one single representative under proportional representation more than you do now. I have gone carefully through the whole position, county by county, and I am certain that my hon. Friends who think differently from us respecting this Bill have looked into these facts, and if they have looked into them in the way that I have they are bound to come to the same conclusion.
I want now to turn rather from the particular to the general. What case has been made out for this particular Bill? If there is no more to be said for the Bill than has been said for it by the right hon. and learned Attorney-General we might have walked into the Division Lobby at once and condemned it, because no case whatever has been made out for it. I am not reproaching him for that. It is the old familiar picture of a brave man struggling with adversity. There is no case for it, and all the talent in the world could not redeem a ridiculous proposition of this kind. It is proposed to try this thing on the dog. That is the position. You did try it in an English constituency, and they would not tolerate it. You have made your effort and failed, and you cannot cover up your failure by trying it now on Ireland. Let us be frank about this business. What is happening here is this, that those who are putting forward this Bill know that just as Sinn Fein swept the country in the recent General Election it is going to sweep it again when the general election for county councils and other public bodies comes along, and they hope by this system that they will defeat that. They will not. If the system be really proportional representation, and if Sinn Fein be the overwhelming voice of the country, and if proportional representation achieves what it claims it does, it is bound to make Sinn Fein proportionate master of the situation in all these public bodies just as
it is in Parliament. There is no escape from that, but what do you think Sinn Fein will say of that performance? They will realise that Parliament has been asked to lend itself to what they will regard as a trick to keep them from their just rights, and you will aggravate them, and the warring body of Nationalists split up among themselves will see all hope of reconcilement for ever vanish, because you will find in every one of the county councils, rural councils, boards of guardians, and urban councils a battle royal between Sinn Fein and Nationalism, and you will go on perpetuating the split. That will be the result, and you cannot escape from it, and no man who knows his Ireland will challenge that statement. We protest that as we are part of this United Kingdom you are bound to treat us as you treat all the rest of the British race. You ought not to regard us on the one hand as supermen, nor have you on the other hand any right to regard us as a great deal less than human and the only people fit to be shackled with a system of this kind. I hope the House will not stultify itself by lending itself to any such proposition. I hope it will do as other houses have done, and tell those who have put forward this Bill that it does not represent justice as between all the sections of the United Kingdom, and that wherever else it ought to be tried Ireland is the last place in which to attempt it. I would ask the House very earnestly to believe that we on these benches desire the good of our country as whole-heartedly, as earnestly, and as sincerely as any who sit in this House, that we are as deeply concerned for her welfare, that we have tried as hard as any to advance her good name and her best interests, and that we believe sincerely that if you go on with this mad proposition you will have done as bad a day's work as you have ever done for Ireland.

Lieutenant-Colonel W. GUINNESS: We have had a very interesting speech from one of the Members for Belfast, in which he gave the description of the state of affairs in Sligo before proportional representation and after.

Mr. MOLES: Not after; there is nothing to describe after.

Lieutenant-Colonel GUINNESS: He gave us the state of affairs in Sligo before proportional representation, and I can give it to the House after. Before propor-
tional representation, he showed in greater detail than I could have done to what an absolutely bankrupt state local administration had reduced that community. Since proportional representation, although in Sligo for thirty years there had never been a Unionist representative, there are now nine Unionists as against sixteen of all the other parties together, and the Unionists happen to be the strongest party in the whole of the municipal council. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that Sligo was only one of many cases. He told us that Sinn Fein had swept Cork and Dublin, and I think it will probably be found that it will also sweep Limerick. Surely that is a very strong reason for us to try this same method in those cities that we have found so extraordinarily successful in Sligo. No doubt it is not necessary in Ulster from that point of view; but this Bill is primarily intended to help administration in the South of Ireland, and if it will do that and not injure Ulster there is a strong case for this House to pass it. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion dealt in some detail with the census returns, and pointed out that the number of Protestants in various counties in Ireland is so small that they could not hope to get a quota enabling them to have a Protestant representative under proportional representation. We are not thinking of Protestants in local administration. In Ireland we want to give representation to the ratepayers, who in many cases have not had their interests properly considered, and we are quite convinced, judging by the Sligo experience, that we shall get a far more just representation of minorities under proportional representation than under the present system. The hon. and gallant Member for Mid Antrim (Major O'Neill) pointed to the fact that this House has on several occasions refused to adopt proportional representation for Parliamentary elections, and he seemed to think that that was a conclusive argument that it was unsuitable for local elections in the same way. The Royal Commission on electoral reform dealt with this particular point, and in their Report—they reported against the transferable vote in the case of Parliamentary elections—they said:
Nor does our adverse view of the transferable vote extend beyond the political election where the question which party is to govern the country plays a predominant part. As we have already pointed out, the system shows at its best in elections where the comparative merits of candi-
dates as individuals are at issue. Thus there would be much to be said in its favour as a method for the constitution of an elected Second Chamber. Again, though it is no part of our reference to consider the applicability of the transferable vote to non-legislative bodies, we may observe that many of the most important objections to its use for political purposes are not valid against proposals to employ it where the functions of the body to be chosen are primarily administrative.
Local government in Ireland is not, or ought not to be, devoted only to political issues. What we need in Ireland, and what we have not had, is to get the assistance of the large ratepayers and of the best administrators. That is the object, I take it, of this Bill, and not to give a bigger representation to Protestants or a bigger representation to Catholics. The true cause of the opposition which is being shown by Ulster Members is no doubt a desire for what I believe to be an unattainable uniformity between Ulster and this country. They do not really deal with the merits of proportional representation in Ireland. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Not in Ireland. The hon. Member dealt with proportional representation in general. He did not deal with the particular case of the ratepayer in Ireland. An ideal is set up which, I think, is quite unpracticable, and what is justified neither by past experience nor, I think, by their own true interest. It is a very remarkable feature of British legislation that, while insisting on union in essentials, it allows the maximum variety to meet local conditions. In local government the London system is very different from the system of Manchester. In the government of the three Kingdoms, Scottish legislation has been very different from Irish legislation, and, if special local conditions can be shown, Parliament is accustomed to afford a patient hearing to, and not to turn down, a proposal owing to any theoretical objections on the ground of uniformity.
I believe that Ulster is making a great mistake if she is seeking to alter this principle. Ireland differs from England in race, temperament and social organisation, and that difference must be reflected in the legislation suitable for that country. England's meat in many cases would be Ireland's poison. To force the same regime on both countries would be to create a grievance, and to play straight into the hand of the Separatists. The circular which we have had sent round states that it is obvious that if this were introduced
into the local government of Ireland it would inevitably extend to Parliamentary elections. Is not this an astounding admission of the value of proportional representation? Obviously, the system will not be extended unless it is a success, and, if the circular means anything, it is that when once given a fair trial the merits of proportional representation will be found such as to make it irresistible. But I think the whole of this argument is really misleading, because the inference is that the scheme is put forward as part of a wider plan for the reform of local administration throughout the three Kingdoms, and of course it is nothing of the kind. The proposed reform in Irish local elections is merely asked for to meet the special conditions of that country, and can therefore be safely supported by those who, on general grounds, object to the extension of proportional representation.
There is a great contrast in the electoral position as between England and Ireland. In England, both for Parliamentary and local government purposes, every opinion can at least gain expression under the existing system. Opinions are distributed in so fine a mosaic that all colours find representation in each district. In Ireland it is entirely otherwise. Political convictions are no longer there a mosaic, but they are grouped in great monotonous patches, and the effect of this grouping is accentuated by the fact that party class and religious politics control Irish local elections to a degree which is undreamt of in Great Britain. In Parliamentary elections, no doubt, a rough balance is brought about by the opinions of the minority in the South being indirectly represented here, either by Northern representatives or by representatives for Great Britain, but this does not help in the least in local government. The Nationalist organisation in the South has for many years monopolised representation, and this fact will be aggravated, as against Unionist opinion, very much in the future, because it is well known that Mr. John Redmond exercised a very strong influence in favour of toleration in local politics—an influence which is in no way accepted by his Sinn Fein successors. At the present time there is a very great sense of grievance in the South of Ireland. I take for the moment the religious census which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Belfast. In Dublin, although it is on this evidence and on other evidence estimated that about one-seventh
of the population is Unionist at the present time, there are only two members of the Dublin Corporation representing the Unionist party. That is to say, although it has one-seventh of the population, it has only about one-fortieth of the representation. Owing to the War, it is impossible to get recent figures of the rest of Ireland, but the latest that I could get show that in Munster, out of a total of 227 county councillors, there were only two Unionists. That is to say, there was only 1 per cent. of representation, as against 15 per cent. of the estimated population. [An HON. MEMBER: "Take the other provinces!"]

Mr. MacVEAGH: How many Nationalists are there in county Antrim?

Mr. SPEAKER: It is impossible to go on with the Debate if hon. Members keep up a running conversation. The proper place to do that is in the Lobby—not here.

Lieutenant-Colonel GUINNESS: The hon. Member asked, What is the position in county Antrim? I am not in a position to speak for the North of Ireland, but even if it were true that the converse exists in Antrim—and I have no reason to think it does—it would in no way help the unrepresented Unionist ratepayer in Connaught to be told that large sections of Nationalists were possibly unrepresented in county Antrim. The greatest curse in Ireland has been the ascendancy of extreme political opinion. It has been carried to an extreme degree in local elections and administration. According to the latest figures I could get, in spite of the fact that in Cork the Protestants are estimated to pay about one-half of the rates, no Protestant has ever been appointed as a surveyor, rate collector or a clerk in the county council since the Local Government Act of 1898 came into force. If we wish to encourage moderate opinion in Ireland, we must remove this disability. Although the Sinn Fein party may for a time continue to hold a majority in the local councils, even if a handful of moderates can get elected, and gain inside knowledge of local administration, they will be able to do very much by criticism and publicity to bring about reform, and in doing so there is no doubt that moderate opinion, which is very much needed in Ireland, will be immensely strengthened and encouraged. The sense of injustice now existing among the unrepresented minority would, to a large
extent, be removed if their views could even gain expression upon local authorities. This Bill is unpretentious in its object, and limited in its application, but I honestly believe that it may indirectly prove to have very far-reaching results in breaking down the prejudice of centuries, and allowing Irishmen of all sorts and conditions to work together for the benefit of Irish administration.

Sir M. DOCKRELL: I do not intend to weary the House with any lengthy remarks, especially after the speech of the hon. and gallant Member who has just sat down, I would just like to explain my own position by way of illustration of the arguments which, I think, are sound in support of this Bill. I myself am the only representative of the Southern Unionists—those outside Ulster. I have never before had the honour of being a Member of this House, but, judging from the reports one has seen from time to time, this House seems to have been constantly reminded that Ulster and Unionism were synonymous terms, and that outside Ulster there did not exist such a thing as a Unionist—in fact, that Unionists were almost as extinct as the Dodo, or, at least, you might put them all in a Handley-Page machine—one of those in which the right hon. Gentleman with so much courage flies across to Paris—they are so few in number. Perhaps some hon. Members will be surprised to hear that I am the sole representative in this House of about 350,000 Unionists. I admit that is a very large order, but we must take things as we find them, and that is the absolute fact. That being so, I ask, Does the House think that that is a fair representation? Proportional representation in the Bill, I hope, will have the effect of giving representation where it does not now exist. We have heard a great deal about not arguing from the particular to the universal, and I do not ask the House to argue to-day from the particular city with which I am connected, namely, Dublin.
7.0 P.M.
We are now reaching a stage in Dublin when, as the Irish novelist said, "We backed one another's bills until there was not 7s. 6d. left in the regiment." In the case of Sligo, when they got to that stage things began to improve, and some reform began. I expect that it will be the same in Dublin, because generally reform comes when
things get worse. Owing to the fact of the increase of limited liability companies the old firms of proprietary businesses are passing away and these firms are losing their hold in the representation of Irish and Dublin corporations. I do not think it is possible for anyone to question that. I understand it is not possible to raise the question of the franchise upon this Bill. If it were, I would like to raise the question of a better representation of those who place capital in business. There are some people who deal with a light heart with other people's money. I strongly support this Bill. It is carrying out an operation which has been very successful during the War—the transfusion of blood. Unfortunately I have to speak for the very large number of Unionists outside Ulster. I may say I am the only pebble on the beach. I shall vote for the Bill as an Irishman and as one who lives in Ireland.

Captain DIXON: In rising to address the House for the first time I crave its indulgence. I oppose this Bill being brought forward at the present moment and as injurious to the people of Ireland. It is a purely domestic question how Ireland can best be represented in the local bodies and we have the Government taking up this position with regard to Ireland only. The overwhelming majority of the Irish people are opposed to this Bill because it is opposed to Irish interests or because proportional representation would not suit the conditions of Ireland. This Bill is absolutely foreign to Irish sympathy and Irish feeling. Why is it brought forward at the present moment? It is an attempt to trick Sinn Fein by tinkering with the system of representation, and I believe the majority of these people will resent it. The representation of the people of Ireland is inadequate on these councils, but we do not want Ireland to be made the dumping ground for measures which are being rejected in England and experiments of political cranks. I believe this Bill will destroy to a great extent the personnel of the Irish county council. In some cases the population of these counties runs into three hundred or four hundred thousand, and it would be quite impossible for a man to canvass these three or four hundred thousand people or to send letters to every one of them. By bringing in this system of
political trickery all over Ireland you will give a fillip to Sinn Fein. There are gentlemen prepared to do this when they know that the overwhelming majority of the Irish people are against it. It would only be throwing another apple of discord into the affairs of Ireland. I would ask the House and the Government not to press this Bill. We still believe in Ireland that fair play is a jewel, and I hope you will recognise that.

Captain REDMOND: It must be obvious to all Members that this Bill, while it is opposed by the Ulster Members, has the support of those Members with whom I am associated. It appears to have resolved itself into a petty squabble between the Unionists of Belfast and the Unionists of the South of Ireland. It is a Bill to establish a new system, and I desire to say that I support this Bill, although there are one or two Clauses with the general purpose of which I do not agree. The right hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General suggested that the election should take place for the rural areas in June and not in January. Anyone who knows what the conditions are in Ireland, the climatic conditions, will realise that June would be a much better time than January, and it might be possible to have the whole of the elections on the same day. One of the hon. Members who has just spoken has made a comparison between Belfast and Barcelona. I should not like to make the same comparison with a city of bombs and Bolshevists. The Members for Belfast have been coming here for years, complaining and screaming that they represented an oppressed minority. They do not like now to experience the same thing for themselves, but I suggest to them that what was sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.

An HON. MEMBER: Which goose?

Captain REDMOND: The minority in the rest of Ireland demand and ought to get fair representation. Once, however, the minority of Ulster is thought about, once it is suggested that the minority of Ulster, which is a larger minority than that of the Unionists in the South and West of Ireland, should have as equal and fair representation as the minority in the South, then the cry is heard, "Hands off Ulster!" These are the very words that fell from the mouth of the hon. Gentleman who seconded this Amendment He turned round to the hon. and gallant Gen-
tleman the Member for Bury St. Edmunds—I took his words down—and said, "Leave out Ulster." That is the very kernel of the opposition to this Bill by Members from the North of Ireland. Let the minority in the South of Ireland, because they belong to one political persuasion, have fair representation! But the minority in the North of Ireland, in Belfast, Derry, and Tyrone, must ever and always be ground down by the Ulster ascendancy, and we, they say, shall never allow them to have their proper and fair representation! We who come from Ireland know only too well the real opposition to this Bill. It is this: Hon. Members opposite know that under proportional representation it is quite possible, nay, probable, that the majority of the people in Derry City, who are Nationalists, will for the first time come into their proper representation. They also know that the people in the county of Tyrone—a division of which I had the honour to represent for several years in this House—will also come into their own. They do not care two straws whether the Unionists of Dublin—or Waterford for that matter—get representation so long as the Nationalists of Belfast, Derry, and Tyrone do not get their fair share. That is the kernel and the essence of the Ulster opposition.
We heard from the seconder of this Amendment that one standard should not be set for Ireland and another standard set for the United Kingdom. I am very glad indeed to say that with that principle I am in total accord. It is a most interesting episode at this time of day to find an Ulster representative, the representative of Ulster Unionism, coming to the House of Commons and saying that majorities should have their rights as well as minorities, and that majority rule—that is the same standard—should apply in Ireland as in the rest of the United Kingdom. If that rule had been made applicable during the last century what a different history there would have been in Ireland. But no, the same standard has never been administered to Ireland as to Great Britain. Majorities in Ireland have never counted. A powerful minority from the north-east corner of that country has been able to clog the wheels of progress. [Laughter.] It is all very well for hon. Members to laugh. They know as well as I do that every great measure of public reform that was ever proposed in this House for all classes in Ireland, especially for the working-classes, has been opposed by hon.
Members sitting upon the benches opposite, or their representatives. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Only the other day we had an instance of a Bill, proposed from these benches, brought in to give the workpeople of Belfast the right to work. In what lobby were hon. Members opposite?

Mr. M'GUFFIN: The only Lobby they could go into!

Captain REDMOND: The hon. Member says: "The only lobby into which they could go." Yes, and in absolute consistency with their past record, they voted for their reactionary Tory principles. That is the upshot to the opposition to this Bill. What about Clause 7, which the Attorney-General, or, I suppose, in his absence, I may say the Chief Secretary, has thought fit to introduce into the Bill? Clause 7 has got no more to do with this Bill than if it had been introduced into the Bill to which we have just given a Second Reading. It confers upon the Local Government Board general powers, not concerning the proposals made in this Bill itself, but concerning the whole system of the administration of local government in Ireland. I challenge the Attorney-General, when making his reply, if he intends to reply, to say upon what grounds, for what reason, under what circumstances, and from what pressure he was brought to introduce this extraneous Clause into this measure.

Mr. M'GUFFIN: Jealous of the Clause as well as jealous of the Bill?

Captain REDMOND: As I mentioned to the House on rising, this Bill was not of our creation. The hon. Member wants to know that! I can tell him, and the Attorney-General, I am sure, will endorse me, when I say that this Bill was not of our creation or initiation in the slightest respect whatsoever.

Mr. DEVLIN: Guinness's Bill!

Captain REDMOND: My hon. Friend beside me says it is Guinness's Bill. It may be Guinness's Bill, but at any rate it is not Dunville's. I am very glad the hon. Member interrupted, because the one point I was most anxious, above all others, to make on rising was that we have had neither hand, act, nor part in bringing this Bill into the House. Having been brought into the House it is a question for us as to what action we shall take upon it. In all problems, and in all con-
siderations of the Irish problem, we upon these benches have always given the greatest consideration to minorities. [An HON. MEMBER: "Oh."] As hon. Members will remember in dealing with the Home Rule Bill we were only too anxious to do what we could for the then minority in the North-east of Ireland. This Bill has now been brought forward in the interests of minorities—I do not care whether the minority is in the south, or west, or north-east of Ireland. So far as I am concerned, I support this measure because I believe it will give fair representation to minorities whether they be Southern Unionists or Ulster Nationalists. I cannot, however, understand hon. Members opposite. They must recognise, though they may be in a majority for the time being in the House, they are still in a minority in Ireland, and yet they come forward and declare against and oppose a measure to increase the representation of, and to give fairplay to, minorities throughout the whole country.
So far as the Clause about which I am speaking goes it confers upon the Local Government Board general sweeping powers. What right have the Government, I ask, to come to this House and say that the Local Government of Ireland is not going to be carried on in the future as it has been in the past? What right have they to give to this important and almost omnipotent Board in Dublin an extra power? Have the Local Government Board asked for this power? If they have not asked for this power, have the people of Ireland, including the friends of hon. Members opposite, asked for it to be given to the Local Government Board? On the contrary, I believe that it is the work of the bureaucracy in Ireland, who are only too anxious to bolster up and attempt to make permanent and lasting that system of Castle Government which has done so much harm and played so much to the detriment of the country. Hon. Members opposite have spoken about differential treatment in regard to Ireland. They want Ireland to be treated exactly the same as this country. They want Ulster to be treated like Yorkshire.

An HON. MEMBER: The same!

Captain REDMOND: Yes. Are coercion Acts applicable in Yorkshire? They are applicable in Ireland. I thought I heard the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that he did not want coercion Acts?

Sir E. CARSON: I did not say any such thing.

Captain REDMOND: I beg the right hon. and learned Gentleman's pardon, I am afraid I was mistaken.

Sir E. CARSON: What I said was that I had no objection to their being extended to Yorkshire.

Captain REDMOND: I can quite understand the right hon. and learned Gentleman, from his past career, not objecting to coercive Acts being extended all round the world.

Sir E.CARSON: They would never be used in Yorkshire!

Captain REDMOND: After all is said and done, right hon. and hon. Members from Ulster say that they want precisely the same government in Ulster as there is in this country. I wonder what they would say to their friends in Ulster, either farmers or landlords, if it was proposed that the Land Act of 1903 should not apply to Ireland because it was not applied to this country? I wonder what they would say if they went to their constituents, especially the rural Members, and said that the Agricultural Labourers Acts should not be applied to Ireland because they were not applied to this country? Their answer may be, "Oh, but we want them applied all round!" [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear!"] Are hon. Members going to set about and get them applied to England? Will they refuse to accept a single measure for the benefit of Ireland, for any class or section of the community, until it is applied to England? Is that their doctrine? If so, it is an exceedingly new one. It was not their doctrine when they got their Land Act in 1903. It was not their doctrine when they got subsequent measures, not only for the benefit of Ireland at large, but for their own constituents and friends in particular. If that is their doctrine now, it indeed is a very new doctrine, and one that, I think, they will depart from in a very short time. It is unnecessary for me once more to state that I stand by the representation of minorities, and that is why I support this Bill. I want to see the Protestant Unionists of the South and the Catholic Nationalists of the North, both of whom are in a minority, get fair representation in their local districts, and I hope, with the deletion, at any rate, of this Clause, that this Bill will pass into law.

Sir E. CARSON: The speech that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for the Ormean Division of Belfast was one that I should very much have wished had been delivered in the presence of a much larger House, for it was one of the best maiden speeches that I have heard for a long time in this House. It was informing in its material, it was carefully thought out, it was logical in its conclusions, and, notwithstanding many interruptions, I congratulate my hon. Friend upon having got through the ordeal of his maiden speech so well. I have been asking myself who has instigated this Bill. Until the hon. Member for Waterford (Captain Redmond) spoke I thought that he and the hon. Member for the Falls Division of Belfast (Mr. Devlin) had instigated it.

Mr. DEVLIN: What right had you to think that?

Sir E. CARSON: I will tell the hon. Member I felt perfectly certain that the Sinn Fein party did not suggest it. I think the Attorney-General admitted that the Bill was largely directed against the Sinn Fein party, and I do not suppose that Mr. De Valera was consulted. On the other hand, there are twenty-two Unionists from Ulster here who have never been consulted at all, and who were no more consulted in relation to this Bill than if they had never been elected for this House at all. I thought that an Irish Executive would surely consult some Irish Members or some Irish party, and under these circumstances I really thought it must have been the hon. Member for the Falls Division and the hon. Member for Waterford who were the originators of this Bill. Now we know that we may take it that the solitary representative from the South-West is the only one remaining, and although I do not hear him say that he was the originator of the Bill he is going to support it. On a matter involving constitutional right in relation to local government elections in Ireland, I enter my emphatic protest at this early stage of the Session against this method adopted by the Irish Government of not having the least regard to the opinion of hon. Members elected to this House in regard to such constitutional changes. I really do not see what is the use of our coming here at all, and I am not sure that I shall not become a Home Ruler if this sort of thing goes on.
Look at the absurdity of it. I am not now going to detain the House with a lecture on proportional representation, but
I may say that I have listened to discussions on that subject for twenty years or more, and I have never yet got the faintest idea of what it means. I do not know, and I do not think the Attorney-General knows or, if he does, he certainly did not explain it to the House when he introduced this Bill in his lucid statement. I cannot find it in the Bill, except in a mystical statement at the end, where it says that a transferable vote means a vote
capable of being transferred to the next choice when the vote is not required to give a prior choice the necessary quota of votes, or when, owing to the deficiency in the number of votes given for a prior choice, that choice is eliminated from the list of candidates.
I have pictured to myself a county council election in Galway—

Mr. DEVLIN: Sligo.

Sir E. CARSON: I take Sligo, where there are 2 per cent. of Unionists or Protestant voters, and when they go to vote each voter will see in front of him the words I have just read.

Mr. A. WILLIAMS: Oh, no, he will not!

Sir E. CARSON: Then the hon. Member opposite says he will not even know that much.

Mr. A. WILLIAMS: He will see posted up what he has to do in marking his paper. Those words have nothing to do with the elector's part of the work.

Sir E. CARSON: Well, if these words have nothing to do with the work, this is the only part of the Bill in which I can find anything about proportional representation. I do not claim to have any special ability in relation to this, or anything in relation to proportional representation, but I never have understood what it means. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sligo understood it!"] I will talk about Sligo in a moment. I am not going to indulge in a lecture about proportional representation. It has never been shown, and it cannot be shown, that it would be any advantage either in the North or in the South of Ireland in relation to the existing state of affairs there. The hon. and gallant Gentleman behind me, who took such an exalted attitude of moderate opinion for the occasion, in every one of his arguments simply begged the question, and he said that if you will only do this the minority will be represented all over the place. I think the Attorney-General drew the gloomiest picture of self-government in
Ireland I have ever heard described in this House, and I certainly will make a note of all he said with a view hereafter to any Amendment they may make in the Home Rule Act, for if the description the right hon. Gentleman gave is anything like the reality, and I am not saying it is not—

Mr. DEVLIN: The Attorney-General is a Unionist, like yourself.

Sir E. CARSON: If the gross mismanagement he spoke of exists to the extent that he has described, and it is actually necessary at the very moment when you are introducing proportional representation to introduce a Clause to say that on the ipse dixit of the Local Government Board you can abolish a county council, what becomes of local government in Ireland? That is being introduced in the same Bill which according to his argument, and the argument of the hon. and gallant Gentleman behind me, is going to revolutionise the whole of the representation of the county councils of Ireland. I do not believe it for a moment, and I doubt very much if anybody can adduce any arguments, to show that it is true.
They always say "Look at Sligo." Now I think I know as much about Sligo as most hon. Members, and I only wish that a fuller House had heard the full description of what happened at Sligo which was given by the hon. Member for the Ormean Division of Belfast. Sligo was the outstanding instance of the way in which dishonest administration run mad could bring a place to bankruptcy. The councillors of the Sligo Corporation thought they could get along without enforcing rates and especially exempting themselves personally. As they were getting no rates they had no money, and they could not pay their employés, who were left without wages. The gas was going to be cut off because they could not pay for it, and eventually the furniture and the mace of the mayor was sold up by the sheriff's men in the courthouse in Sligo. Under these conditions the ratepayers' association got together, and they comprised all classes, including the labouring classes. They knew that all this was disastrous, and the election happened to be under proportional representation. I will show how all this came about in a moment. The whole of this revolt against mismanagement and bankruptcy was brought about by this corporation, including the non-
payment of wages and debts and everything else. Was there ever a more absurd argument?
What happened in Sligo before they got proportional representation? It was given to Sligo after investigation there, and they asked for it, and with their own consent this House granted it to them. With regard to the Bill that brought forward proportional representation the year before the Reform Bill, I ask the House to remember that this House before it would apply proportional representation even in Parliamentary elections to any of the great constituencies in this country insisted that there should be public investigation held in those various constituencies to try and find out whether the people were in favour of making this great reform, and this great change, and they went round to a number of places and it was found that not in a single place were the people in favour of it. Then my hon. Friend pointed out that at the Convention in Dublin there was a special commission of experts representing the whole of Ireland to go into this question of proportional representation, and they unanimously came to the conclusion that it would not be in the least helpful in Ireland.

Mr. A. WILLIAMS: For Parliamentary purposes, not municipal.

Sir E. CARSON: Municipal purposes are a great deal worse. For Parliamentary purposes you may have the larger area, and a small area like a rural district is not the slightest use for proportional representation. Under these circumstances, I put this to the House with all solemnity. Are the Government treating us fairly in proposing to apply proportional representation to Ireland without one single hour of investigation, without the slightest information, without going into it in any single city or county, without giving anybody in Ireland a single opportunity of being heard as to how it is going to work out, treating every community in Ireland—Belfast, Dublin, Cork, or wherever it may be— with the greatest possible contempt as if they were not worthy even to be considered in relation to this matter? It is a-thing which you would not dare to do in. England or Scotland. I ask the House: Is it fair to come down here and ask us to accept what has been rejected over and over again in England and in Scotland, and to tell us, although not a single party
in Ireland has even been consulted on the matter, that we must accept it, whether we like it or not? Why? Because for some unknown reason the Government think that they ought to anticipate the action, I suppose, of the Sinn Feiners, and because they think that by this indirect method rather than by direct treatment they can deal with the menace of the Sinn Feiners, who, after all, are now, at all events, in the majority in Ireland so far as representation in this House is concerned. It is really a political outrage. It is a thing which would not be tolerated in this country for one moment, and I ask the House, when we go to a Division—I shall certainly encourage my Friends to go to a Division—to make a protest against this exceptional treatment. We have never deserved this treatment, because we have always been willing to go along with you in all the different matters. Take the last four years. We have been quite willing to have every measure applied to us that has been applied to this country. What really happened is that when you have anything good you exclude us from it, like the Housing Bill, the Health Bill, and the Education Bill, and when you want to make an experiment on the vile body you choose Ireland as the place in which to make it. You are trying to do that by this Bill. I ask the House to say that it is not treating us fairly as members of the United Kingdom. I ask hon. Members, and especially hon. Members opposite from my own country, to look at the Bill, whether they are really going to confide to the Local Government Board the powers by Orders in Council that this Bill proposes to give.

Captain REDMOND: No!

Sir E. CARSON: What are they? The Local Government Board are to be enabled by this Bill to sweep away every provision about the representation of every single corporation in Ireland, and, of course, of every county council. It is to be left to the supreme judgment of the Local Government Board to divide all the counties, boroughs, urban and rural districts, Poor Law unions, and towns into local areas at their own free will. Really that is delegating to a Department a far bigger power than anything ever granted before, and, if there were nothing else in the Bill, I for my part would oppose it on that ground. They will be able to fix the wards and the boundaries, and they will be able to gerrymander matters to suit whatever policy
they have in view. Not only will they have power to do this, but they will have power to regulate the numbers.
The number of members to be elected for each local electoral area shall be such as may be assigned thereto by Order of the Local Government Board, and in constituting the local electoral areas and assigning members thereto the Board shall, so far as practicable, secure that the total number of members of any local authority other than a rural district council or board of guardians shall not be altered.
An hon. Member opposite challenged me, and said that there was a difference between Parliamentary and local elections. I think the difference is all in favour of applying proportional representation first to Parliamentary and afterwards, if found successful, to local elections. In a local election, in order to bring in proportional representation, you have to group a number of areas. In, that way you may get all the representatives from any one district or from near one district, and you may have special districts absolutely unrepresented. One advantage in rural district councils is that the rural councillor knows the particular place from which he comes. Once you group these districts you have no certainty that any particular area will be represented at all. Therefore, so far from it being an advantage to try this experiment in local government, the advantage is to have it first applied for Parliamentary purposes, and that the House has rejected. Then—
The Local Government Board may by Order apply the provisions of this Section with the necessary modifications—
whatever that means—
to the election of the members of any kind of local body other than the local authorities mentioned in this Section upon the application of the local body concerned.
I say that for the House to perform an experiment of this kind and at the same time to leave to the Local Government Board the whole setting up and framing of the boundaries of these various local authorities is really an outrage upon the procedure of this House. As far as I can see, it does not even require an inquiry. They do it all on their own initiative, and there is not even an inquiry. The council is not allowed to be heard. The ratepayers are not allowed to be heard. No one is allowed to be heard. It is all handed over to the Local Government Board in Ireland. They will frame the constituencies to cut out the Sinn Feiners or to make the Sinn Feiners as harmless as possible. I have
not that confidence in them, and I decline to be a party to this kind of legislation. We do not want in Ireland this change that you have refused to have in England. Our case is that if you have it at all it ought to be argued out for the whole of the United Kingdom, and that we are right is shown by the fact that we know perfectly well that if the matter were being debated as regards the whole of the United Kingdom there would be a very different House, the arguments would be weighed, and there would be a very different Front Bench.

Mr. MacVEAGH: You are making a good Home Rule speech.

Sir E. CARSON: We have not had a single argument except from my right hon. Friend who has proposed this Bill. It is a very far-reaching Bill. It is an experimental Bill. It is a Bill taking away existing constitutional privileges and rights in relation to local government. It is a Bill discriminating between different parts of the United Kingdom. Above all, it throws the whole arbitrary power of the settlement of the constituencies into the hands of an administrative body, and under these circumstances I ask the House to reject it.

8.0 P.M.

Sir ROBERT WOODS: I rise to lend my support to this Bill, and I do it with the trepidation that naturally and notoriously afflicts Members of this House who address it for the first time. I regard this as an extremely important Bill for us in Ireland, and as one which gives us some hope that a way may be found out of the somewhat chaotic condition of municipal affairs that exists in many parts. Minorities in Ireland are notoriously unrepresented. I do not wish to apologise for or to excuse the election of people to municipal offices on religious or political grounds, beyond saying that if men choose to give their votes in a particular way they are perfectly within their rights in doing so. There is another very important minority that I hope and believe is growing in Ireland. It is a minority that considers that in a municipal election only two tests should be applied, namely, business capacity and individual integrity. It is a minority, but it is a growing one. A great many attempts have been made recently to get men with good business capacity on to municipal bodies in Ireland, but owing to the impossibilty of getting men elected, those attempts have
been sporadic and generally unsatisfactory, the result of it being that the case has been allowed to go by default and people have given up the effort in despair. That is the true reason why in municipal elections you are lucky if you poll 50 per cent. of your minority vote. People know that the thing is impossible, whereas under proportional representation it is a certainty that your representation will be in exact proportion to your strength if you choose to exert it. One of the strongest reasons for the Bill is that the proposer of the Amendment had no better argument than the fact that the Bill was not to be applied to England. I submit that that is no argument at all. It is as if one said, "The weather is very fine in England, and so we in Ireland must not be allowed to put up umbrellas." We need this protection, and I regard that fact as a very strong reason why we should have it. We have been told there would be great difficulty in understanding this complex and very difficult matter of proportional representation. It is said it is beyond the capacity of the voter. I have heard the same kind of allegation made with regard to the fifth proposition in the First Book of Euclid, and therefore it carries no weight with me. I have considered this matter as well as I can, and I look on this Bill so far as the part of Ireland for which I speak is concerned, as one of first-class importance. I hope, therefore, the House will pass it.

Mr. W. COOTE: I am sorry the hon. Member for Waterford (Captain Redmond) in his remarks was rather unkind to Ulster, and in order to clear the air I think I had better state the facts which govern the representation of Ulster so far as the county councils are concerned. In County Antrim something like 30 per cent. of the population is Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholics have five councillors out of twenty. In Armagh where 45 per cent. of the people are Roman Catholics, they have ten councillors; in Cavan, where 81 per cent. of the population is Roman Catholic, they have all the representation, and the Unionists are not represented; in County Donegal, where the Roman Catholics are 78 per cent. of the population, the Protestants only have four representatives; in County Down, with 31 per cent. of the population, the Catholics have eight representatives; in Fermanagh, with 56 per cent. of the population, they have fifteen representatives; in County London-
derry, with 41 per cent. of population, they have eight; in the County of Monaghan they have the entire representation although they only represent 74 per cent. of the population; and in Tyrone, with 55 per cent. of the population, they have thirteen Roman Catholic representatives. So much for the representation of Roman Catholics in the Ulster county councils.
Now I come to its effect. I cannot do better than give you the case as I know it. For the last seventeen years I have had the honour of being a county councillor for county Tyrone. We have a very small majority of Unionists, but are we the bigots that we are represented as being? Take the officers whom we have appointed. We have two county surveyors, one a Protestant and one a Roman Catholic; we have an asylum for Fermanagh and county Tyrone; the senior doctor is a Protestant and the assistant doctor a Roman Catholic. We have lately started a sanatorium. The first doctor we elected and the first matron we chose were both Roman Catholics, and we chose them because we believed they were the most competent people to take charge of an institution of that kind. Nearly all the nurses in the county are Roman Catholic and half the assistant surveyors as well. Then take the committees — the health insurance and other committees. They are so constituted by arrangement as to give only a fair majority to the Unionists. I want to challenge my hon. Friends opposite who have made these statements against us. I say that since local government came into force, something like twenty years ago, the County Council of Tyrone, although it has a Unionist majority, has given more positions to Nationalists and Roman Catholics in that county than have been given by Nationalist county councillors outside Ulster all over Ireland to Unionists.

Mr. MacVEAGH: How many Catholics are there on your salary list?

Mr. COOTE: All these I have mentioned have salaries.

Mr. MacVEAGH: You know what I mean.

Mr. COOTE: I think these figures are convincing proof that the county Tyrone Unionists are not so intolerant as has been suggested. The hon. Member for Trinity College (Sir R. Woods) supports proportional representation on mathematical grounds. He suggests on those grounds it is consistent. That is where I join issue
with him. He forgets the areas and the small minorities in the areas which even proportional representation will not make any provision for. He forgets the great number of people who will not bother about voting at all, and therefore I say this question cannot be solved as a mere mathematical problem. It will not work out in practice as it appears to do on paper. I object to this change being made because it is impracticable and impossible in operation. Then, again, take the county council areas, of which there are twenty-one. With a county council area of 2,000 voters the county council candidate has quite enough to do to canvass and circularise that number of voters. But under the provisions of this Bill, as explained by the Attorney-General, there will be areas ranging in size from three to nine representatives. Let me take the case of a six-representative area. That will mean, that the county council candidate, drawn from the ordinary population, it may be a farmer or a trader, without very much money or time to spare, will be forced to contest an election in an area which is equal to a Parliamentary area. He will have 12,000 electors to canvass. He will have to circularise them all, he will have to provide the necessary stationery and clerical assistance, and he will have to engage personation agents at the various polling booths. It will, in fact, be a miniature general election, the cost of which will fall on the candidates, who will not have the special facilities of franking their letters which are enjoyed by the candidates in Parliamentary contests.
Then, again, take the question of oversight. Here will be found one of the most serious objections to this Bill. It applies equally to county council and district council work. A very important class of county council and district council work involves direct personal contact. A district councillor is responsible for his area. He must see that his roads are put on the presentment sheet; he must see that any defects in the bridges in the district are reported; he must see that the Poor Law work of the district is properly discharged. If he is now to be one of six councillors or a district, it will mean that what is everybody's business will prove to be nobody's business. It may be possible for the six elected members to be chosen from one corner of the constituency and they may know nothing about the other districts in the constituency. Therefore there will be no proper oversight. Under
the present arrangement in my county a district councillor has an area of about 300 square miles to look after, but under the proposed arrangement, by joining up six areas, you will get 1,800 square miles to be looked after, and I am very much afraid that no county councillor will be able to do that, so that for a considerable part of the constituency there will be very little oversight. Under proportional representation you will not have the effective work which is possible under direct representation. You will also have indifferent and careless members who will not look after the particular interests of their particular districts; they will shirk duty and throw the responsibility on other people.
Another very strong objection I have to proportional representation is this, that it will in many constituencies tend to intrigue and gerrymandering. There will be a policy of give-and-take, which may result in the best men being rejected and the substitution for them of accommodating people who will not mind if they do put their hands into the public purse. Suppose you have in a closely contested district in the North a Unionist majority. The Unionists at present are doing the work, and doing it well, and I think that, whatever may be said of other parts of Ireland, no one will allege that there is anything wrong with county council and district council work in the province of Ulster at the present time. It is, admittedly, done economically and efficiently. But suppose you develop a school of cranks who object, for instance, to allowing on the road motor traffic in the interest of agriculture. Suppose I go before the constituency at the next election and say I am in favour of the roads being used for this motor traffic, in the interest of the development of the country generally. You will always be able to get a margin of cranks who will not give way, and a cave may be formed by these cranks consisting of Nationalists, Sinn Feiners, and some Unionists. What is going to happen to the men who stand fearlessly for clean public life and administration? I am certain the effect will be to render county council work less efficient; you will degrade it; you will bring in to do it men who will not act according to their conscience, who will be simply accommodating individuals who want to catch votes and to carry out their views at the expense of the county rates.
Why should this change be resorted to in communities which are doing well? Why should this be brought about simply because Sligo has not done its work efficiently? Because Sligo was found wanting and was a disgrace to public life, why should we all be made doctors in our own cases? Speaking for my province, I say that our administration is as healthy as it possibly can be, that the work is done as economically as possible, and that there is no reason why this change should be made. Instead of stopping Sinn Fein, you are giving it a handle with which to intrigue and remove the solid foundation on which our county and municipal work generally is standing, and to weaken if not to destroy it on many boards, especially in Ulster. Lastly, this scheme has not been invited by the people of Ireland. It does not appeal to the people in Ireland. It is all very well for the Attorney-General to say he has letters from individuals who are loud in the praises of proportional representation. They do not understand what it means. It looks so well on paper, but in practice it is impossible. I make this offer to the right hon. Gentleman: If he believes that the people and the Press of Ireland are in love with this measure, will he make it optional, so that they may by resolution adopt it as a means of electing their representatives if they so wish? If he will do that, I have no objection whatever. Then the people on the public boards in Ireland can themselves put this very popular and plausible thing into practice, if they think it is wise to do so. They ought to be the best judges. Since they were not consulted, that is a courtesy which the right hon. Gentleman ought to allow them. This measure is going to work mischief. It is going to cause inefficiency, to destroy the personal control by a district councillor and the county councillor of his own particular people and his own particular area, and to allow a class of men to come into these councils who will not be careful of the public funds. As such I denounce the measure and shall be glad to take part in the Division against it.

Mr. MacVEAGH: The hon. Member who has just addressed the House has delivered an eloquent panegyric upon the county council of which he is a member. He has told us how broad-minded and tolerant he and all his colleagues on that county council are. Not satisfied with that, he challenged anybody in this House to get up and point to any respect in which
the Unionist county councils of Ulster have shown anything in the nature of intolerance. He confessed to ignorance as to the difference between the wages list and salaries list. There is material difference. The salaries list consists of those who hold the appointments worth having, while the wages list consists of those who hold insignificant appointments, and who are paid by weekly wage.

Mr. COOTE: The county surveyor!

Mr. MacVEAGH: The county surveyor is the only case to which he can point. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the medical officer."] What are the facts? There are five Catholics on the salaried list of the county council of a county in which the Catholics are in a majority. There is no man who has preached the doctrine of exclusice-ness in the giving of these appointments more vehemently than the hon. Gentleman, yet he comes, to this House and poses as the champion and apostle of toleration and broad-mindedness. He knows Dungannon. There the Catholics and Protestants are about equal in population, but there are only two Catholic employés under the Unionist council. Out of a total salary and wages list of £575, only £36 goes to Catholics, and that goes to two street scavengers. Yet the hon. Gentleman comes here and says: "We are the champions of toleration and broadmindedness. Who dares to point the finger of scorn at us?" I could go through the whole list of the local authorities in a county in which the Unionists hold the majority, and in not a single instance do they give appointments to the Catholics, with the five exceptions I have named, although the Catholics form a majority of the population of the county. I am amazed at the effrontery of the hon. Gentleman in these circumstances in getting up and challenging anybody to accuse this county council of intolerance.

Mr. COOTE: What about the rest of Ireland?

Mr. MacVEAGH: I can tell you all about the rest of Ireland, but I prefer to deal with your county first. We have heard a great deal to-night about Sligo. Here is a speech delivered by the Rev. Thomas Brown, of Bandon, county Cork, a Presbyterian clergyman, a member of the hon. Member's own church. He speaks of the good will shown to the Presbyterian ministers and those of other Protestant denominations in the South of Ireland by their Catholic neighbours, and he says:
Last week, at the Poor Law elections in Cork, Miss Day, a Protestant, was returned at the head of the poll; in Bandon, the Earl of Bandon, a Protestant, is chairman of the town commissioners; in Kinsale, Mr. David Acton, is chairman, and he also is a Protestant; whilst in Skibbereen the same pleasant conditions exist, the chairman there, Mr. William W. Wolfe, being another Protestant.
The examples of not merely religious toleration, but religious generosity on the part of Irish Catholics might be extended almost indefinitely. The Rev. W. Armour, another Presbyterian clergyman of the town of Sligo, appealed to his co-religionist in Ulster to muzzle their Parliamentary representatives, such as the hon. Member to whom the House has just listened, and to allow the Protestants in the South and West to speak for themselves.

Mr. COOTE: Mr. Armour is a Home Ruler.

Mr. MacVEAGH: But he is a Presbyterian minister. Evidently he is suspect once he declares himself in favour of Irishmen settling their own affairs. As soon as it is made clear that the hon. Member has no right to speak in this House on behalf of Protestants in the South and West, he suggests that any Protestant in the South and West who calls himself a Home Ruler is therefore a bad Protestant. I could quote facts by the dozen in this matter, but that would not make the hon. Member ashamed of the statements he has made to-night. As a matter of fact, in every council in Ulster where there are Unionist majorities it is the same. The Antrim County Council has five Catholic employés out of sixty-five, the Armagh County Council three out of fifty, while the Down County Council, of which I know something, out of a total salary list of £5,520 gives £185 to Catholics, who form one-third of the population. Yet the hon. Gentleman is not ashamed of it. In every county in Ulster where the Catholics are in a majority on the local authorities the Protestants have their fair share in the possession of emoluments, and it is the same throughout the South and West of Ireland. But we can safely challenge the Unionists of Ulster to point to a single case in which a Catholic Nationalist has been elected by a Unionist local authority to any job of the value of £200 a year. It is an odious and hateful task for any of us on these benches to pursue this sectarian question at all. I hate to be dragged into a discussion of this kind. It is perfectly sickening. But
we cannot allow charges of this kind to pass without repudiation. We have always preached in this House, and on the platform throughout the length and breadth of the country, that we want nothing more than fair play in our own country, and that the fair play that we claim far ourselves we are willing to give to those who differ from us. Because of that we have always advocated the principle of proportional representation. We are willing to give to minorities everywhere the representation to which their numbers entitle them. Unionist Members who ask for the sympathy of this House on the ground that they are a down-trodden minority who are going to be persecuted off the face of the earth by the majority in Ireland when they get self-government, come here and say, "Do you propose to give representation to minorities in Ireland? The thing is intolerable. Perish the thought! We shall never consent to minority representation because it means the destruction of our monopoly in the northeastern corner of Ulster." That is why they are out against it to-day. It is not any objection to minority representation as such. It is an objection to a system being terminated under which minorities in the North-East of Ireland are able to grind down majorities, and they come here to make their fight to-night for the maintenance of their ascendancy.
There are a few points on the Bill on which I desire to say a word. The first is that no one on these benches, and so far as I know no public authority in Ireland, has ever asked for this Bill. No Irish Member was asked his, opinion or was consulted before or after the Bill was introduced, and no one in this House has any responsibility for the decision or the action of the Government. They have introduced the Bill purely for political pur-purposes, to meet difficulties which they feel themselves they may be face to face with in the course of a few months, ant' I think it is right that we should make it perfectly plain that no one in the House has any responsibility for the introduction of the Bill. It is entirely the responsibilty of the Government themselves. I feel also that if proportional representation is a good thing for Ireland it is an equally good thing for England, and it ought to be applied to England for local elections as well as to Ireland, and if it is a bad thing for England you have no
right to practise it upon us in Ireland. On the details of the Bill I would suggest a few points for the Attorney-General's consideration. In the first place, it does not ensure any unity of elections. If there is one thing on which I agree with the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson) more fully than another it is in want of confidence in the Local Government Board, as in all Government Departments in Ireland. I am very glad to welcome the right hon. Gentleman's conversion and to congratulate him on rising in this House to denounce so vehemently as he did the whole system of Dublin Castle rule in our unfortunate country, and I hope he will go on delivering speeches of that kind in the years which are to come. When he said he had no confidence in the Local Government Board he uttered a sentiment to which we on these benches most cordially subscribe. We are not content to leave it to the Local Government Board to map out these areas for proportional representation. We are not content that they should sit down and plan out a schema guided by no principle but subject to all the political pressure and wire-pulling which can be brought to bear upon it to manipulate constituencies in a certain way. Surely unless proportional representation is to be absolutely hopeless the proper way of doing it is to fix your unit and fix the number of members who will be elected by that unit and adhere religiously to it throughout the whole country. I see no reason why a small town in Ireland should not constitute one unit. I do not know any reason why a small town should not poll all its men in one polling station, and elect them all upon one ticket, and although in rural areas where the population is more scattered it might be necessary to fix a lower figure in the unit still it is necessary that the unit should be definitely fixed in the Bill itself and not fixed arbitrarily by the Local Government Board.
Another point I would suggest to the Attorney-General is that all these local elections should be held on one day, and that instead of being held, as proposed in the Bill, some in June, and some in December, all should be held in June. If it is impossible to hold them next June, hold them the June after. There is really no violent hurry for an election next December. Postpone the election till the following June and let us have it in the summer time, which will be much more convenient for everyone. I have gone
through a great many elections depth of winter, and I am not enamoured of them. They are very inconvenient performances. We should extract a great deal more satisfaction out of an election which would be held in the summer months. What is the hurry about having an election in December? You can either force the pace a little further and have it in September, which will give us fairly decent weather, or you can put it back until June. You have a Clause in the Bill postponing the period. Therefore you can fix any period you like in the postponement Clause, and there is no reason why it should not go back until the following June. A third suggestion I would make is that all these elections should be held on the one day and, as far as possible, on one voting paper. It is all a question of organisation. There is nothing at all to prevent it being done. If we have such a capable Local Government Board as the right hon. Gentleman says, there will be no difficulty in framing their regulations ensuring that all elections shall take place on one day and all on one voting paper, which will avoid a great deal of confusion and also a great waste of public money.
We shall offer all the opposition which is within our power to Clause 7. Whether in Committee upstairs, or when the Bill comes down, we shall fight it tooth and nail if this Clause is retained It is a perfectly monstrous proposition that if the Local Government Board is satisfied, after such inquiry as it deems necessary—there is no provision for a public inquiry at which the parties concerned can be represented; without any inquiry at all if the Local Government Board thinks fit—any county council, district council, or town commissioners can be superseded. It is not merely if all these local authorities refuse to discharge their duties, but if they fail to discharge their duties, or if they are unable to discharge their duties they are to be superseded, and an individual appointed. That is a power which we shall never consent to being placed in the hands of any Government Department in Ireland, and we shall offer it every opposition that is within our power. I would suggest to the Attorney-General, who, I must say, considers all the representations which are made to him in a very fair and reasonable fashion, and I think does his best to meet the views put before him, that he should consider our views in respect to these points, and if
he will eliminate this obnoxious Clause, and give us an election at a date which will meet the public convenience, and if he will also arrange that all the elections should be on one day and on one paper, I think he will make his Bill a really useful one, which will meet the public convenience in every way.

Mr. DEVLIN: I am sorry that the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) has left the House, because I intended to offer him my sincere congratulations on the tremendously passionate Home Rule speech which he delivered this evening. Everybody knows that the right hon. Gentleman can be very powerful when he feels strongly, and, whether it is in the House of Commons or in the Courts of Law, we are all deeply interested in hearing declarations of the character of the declaration which was made here to-night. I envy him his power of vituperation and denunciation. Unfortunately for themselves, the members of the Government were all absent. The Chief Secretary for Ireland was absent, the Prime Minister was absent, and the other members of His Majesty's Government were absent. If they had been here I think they would have wriggled in more senses than one at the extraordinary denunciation which the right hon. Gentleman gave to the House of the influence and the conduct of British administrators in Ireland. In the course of his speech he stated that no section of Irish representatives were consulted before this Bill was introduced. He was not consulted. We were not consulted, and the Sinn Fein representatives in Ireland were not consulted. When did the right hon. Gentleman get that experience? Does he not know as well as we do that every action of the Government is taken without consultation with any representative authority in Ireland? He rightly said that in regard to the housing, in regard to reconstruction, and in regard to public health, there has not been a single Irish representative, so far as I know, consulted, and certainly none of the representative bodies in Ireland have been invited to express their views as to the way in which the Government should adjust these problems.
What I complain of in regard to the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division is that, while he gets up in this House and works himself into a perfect agony of indignation against the treatment
of Ireland by the British Government, when it comes to the question of carrying iris own arguments to their logical and legitimate conclusion, he is the most bitter and violent antagonist of the only possible means by which a situation of that sort can be met. We say, and we have said for thirty or forty years, that if you are going to deal with Irish affairs to the satisfaction of the Irish people; if you are going to accept constitutional principles in the guidance of the destinies of either this nation or of Ireland, the only way in which you can do it is by placing the sole and entire responsibility of the government of the country and its administration upon the shoulders of the people themselves. One thing the right hon. Gentleman did not do. He did not deal with the Bill before the House. I wondered when I saw that splendid array of the whole of his party, headed by himself, as if the whole Empire was shaking. They were gathered here to-night as if some terrible evil was to befall Ireland, England, Scotland, and all the countries represented in this Parliament.
What is this Bill? This Bill proposes to give minorities representation. The right hon. Gentleman has for thirty years based his power in appealing to the British electorate upon the principle that he represented a minority. But when a Bill of this character is proposed to give minorities representation upon public bodies he comes to the House of Commons and opposes it with all the violence which he formerly manifested when he was opposing the Home Rule Bill. What is the meaning of it? The meaning of it is this, and I confess that it was to me somewhat of a tragic comedy which was performed in this House, that while the southern Unionists as represented by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, who is the genius and author of this Bill, want proportional representation in order to secure for themselves representation in the South, the right hon. Gentleman is not willing to give, but is here to fight to the death against giving representation to the Nationalist party in the North. The Attorney-General has made a mistake in regard to this Bill. What he should have done would have been to introduce proportional representation to give representation to the southern Unionists, but not apply it to Ulster. In other words, to allow the Unionists in the Nationalist
councils in the South and West of Ireland, but not to allow Nationalists on the Conservative councils in the North of Ireland. Then the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson), who made the House ring with his ironies and cynicisms at the expense of the Government and his violent denunciation of these proposals, would have come here and given his choicest blessing to the Gentleman representing the Coalition Government. That is the whole secret of the right hon. Gentleman's position.
The right hon. Gentleman and his party stand as a whining majority, always telling this House and telling the world that they as a minority must have the power to deny to the majority its rights and privileges which belong to every constitutionally governed country, but the minute you come and ask for minority representation in the North of Ireland they say, "Oh no, it shall not be done" and they are here to fight against it. This has reminded me of a real Irish faction fight with its different colouring, that it was a faction fight between the reactionaries of the North and reactionaries of the South, a fight between the followers of the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division and of the two hon. and gallant Gentlemen (Colonel W. Guinness and Major Newman). I do not know which of the attitudes of these conflicting Irish factions I regard as the most offensive. I heard the hon. and gallant Gentleman who spoke from the other side (Lieutenant-Colonel Guinness), and I have no doubt his remark will be reiterated by the hon. and gallant Gentleman who sits behind me (Major Newman) that what you want in Ireland, and what you would get under proportional representation, is good administrators and large ratepayers. There is a genuine good old Tory reactionary ring about that sentence. I was amused to hear some description given as to what ratepayers were. According to what I gathered, the owner of slum property who extracts large and indefensible rent from the people who live in the slums pays the rates, is the large ratepayer, while the person who is rack rented, the slum dweller, gets out of this unhappy condition and out of his limited capacity to pay, and that his rates are really paid for him. This argument that rates are only paid by the man who hands the money to the rate
collector is the greatest nonsense I ever heard. The real ratepayer is the tenant of the house. The so-called ratepayer is merely the middle man through whom the rate is transferred from the man who pays rent to the man who receives the rate.
Then this talk of wanting good administration I regard as most insulting to the county councils and various public authorities in Ireland. Not from the lips of partisans in this House, but from the lips of men who have followed the administration of local affairs in Ireland, from men like the present Foreign Secretary (Mr. Balfour), and like the late Mr. Wyndham, we have heard the declaration made, not once, but twenty times, that the administration of our Irish county councils and our local boards has been as clear, as clean and as pure, as honest and as efficient as, and in many cases more efficient than, the administration of county government in any part of England or Scotland. And when Gentlemen who call themselves Southern Unionists come here and make these sweeping charges of incapacity, inefficiency, and corruption against the recognised public authorities, who discharge their duties so well, and in my judgment so splendidly, all things considered, as to extort such eloquent eulogy from the Foreign Secretary and Mr. Wyndham, the least they might do was to give some instance to show where this corruption and maladministration takes place.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman (Lieutenant-Colonel Guinness) says we want moderate men. I wonder is be the type of moderate man, or is the hon. and gallan Gentleman behind me (Major Newman) another type of moderate man? Give me the Orangeman beating the big drum. After all, he wants to hold all the power just as now he does not want to give minority representation. He at least believes in
The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.
All that we can understand, but when hon. Gentlemen, aristocrats of England, whose connection with Ireland is that they are landed proprietors, get up in this House and detach themselves from their Ulster Orange Friends and take up the attitude that they are all superior persons, coming from the universities and colleges, whose only acquaintance with Ireland is that they come over and live there for a month in a year and patronise the people, and
then return to this House and speak about inefficiency, bad administration, and the necessity for having moderate men, may I say that you can be very moderate in Ireland if you live in England for eleven months of the year, and they can preach these fine rhetorical homilies in this House when their only view of Ireland is what they get through the columns of the "Outlook" or the "Times," while they represent English constituencies. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, and I join the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) in resenting this patronising air, which has been assumed by those who call themselves Southern Unionists.
But the most remarkable thing which I have heard in this Debate was the sentiment expressed by the hon. and gallant Gentleman to the following effect: "Ireland is different in race, sentiment, characteristics, and temperament," and this statement was delivered with pure, fresh Celtic oratory from the Unionist Members from the North and South—the representatives of the North in their denunciation of the perfidy of the British Government and the representatives of the South in their denunciation of the wickedness of the genuine characteristics of the Irish people. Of course, it is true that Ireland is different in character, traditions, historical records, race, point of view, and everything. And that is why we have asked for and fought for self-government for Ireland during the last forty years, by constitutional weapons, and now since these weapons have been broken by the weapons of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on those benches, and a new instrument for freedom has been taken into its hands by the Irish people, we tell you that until you get rid of our Celtic sentiment, our racial feeling, our Irish fervour, the difference in temperament, and everything which distinguishes one nation from the other, you will never, along the lines on which you have been proceeding, arrive at a solution of the Irish problem. But I do earnestly appeal to right hon. and hon. and gallant Gentlemen not to come here with their special pleas, uttering sentiments of this character, without allowing those sentiments to be properly realised, and putting forward arguments which, if we draw the only logical conclusion, can have no other effect than forcing them to see, as I am sure this House will see, that the solution of this question is not in tin-
kering with proportional representation, or fresh powers of local government, but in transferring the whole power and responsibility of government from this country to Ireland.
I am a Member of this House not because I want to be here. I have the greatest possible respect for Members of the House, and I have the greatest possible contempt for the House as an institution. I have nearly as great a contempt for this House as the Prime Minister has, and I do not know anyone who comes less to this House than I do except the Undersecretaries and various Ministers of the different Departments which have been established since this Government came into existence. But now that we are here, as unfortunately we are here against our will, when legislation is proposed affecting our country, we must try to influence that legislation in order to make it, if not as beneficial as it could be made, the least hurtful to those whom we represent. Therefore, when a Bill of this character is introduced, which proposes to establish proportional representation, I am in favour of the principle laid down in that Bill. I am no convert to that principle. I am a Member of this House nearly seventeen years, though you would not think it to look at me, and on every occasion when a proposal in favour of proportional representation was introduced, I voted for it.
9.0 P.M.
An hon. Gentleman opposite stated tonight that this principle had never been accepted in Parliament. It was accepted. In the Home Rule Act which is now on the Statute Book, there is a Clause which directs that in the cities of Dublin, Belfast, and Cork, the elections of Members of Parliament in the first Irish House of Commons shall be by proportional representation. Therefore this is not the creation of a precedent at all, but is merely following what was done in the case of the Home Rule Act. When the Representation of the People Act was before the House last year, I made a proposal with regard to proportional representation, but, of course, I was defeated, and I think, among others, by the right hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced this Bill. I think it would have been more in the nature of things if the Attorney-General had passed over the Bill to the tender care of its real father, and he would have brought more poetry and more intensity into the nursing process, and would have handled it with skill, and
he would have no evil reputation in this respect, because the right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill laid himself open to the severe criticism by the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division when he told him that one of the extraordinary features of British politics was that the right hon. Gentleman was asked to introduce a Bill in favour of proportional representation, though he was one of the Gentlemen whose votes defeated it in last Parliament. When the Representation of the People Bill was before the House I proposed that the attitude which the House adopted in regard to the Home Rule Act should be taken with regard to proportional representation and should be applied to those cities. That was defeated by such powerful exponents of proportional representation as the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite. Again, when proportional representation was proposed for England, I voted for it. I am in favour of proportional representation because I am in favour of giving the minority in every country. if not their adequate share in the representation, at all events some measure of a share of the representation to which their numbers entitle them, instead of this thing of sweeping away minorities and of telling people, say, at an election where there are 7,000 votes, that those with 3,600 are to have all the representation and the rest none at all. But I do not regard this as half so important in regard to Parliamentary representation as I do in regard to municipal and county representation, because, after all, I do not think we lose so very much if we do not have proportional representation in an assembly of this character. This is not a business assembly; it is a debating society largely made up of Gentlemen who, I understand, now find themselves in the painful position of being in constant conflict between their consciences and their coupons. I do not regard it as so important here, because this is not a business assembly. But a local body is a business assembly. A municipal corporation ought to be a model of how business should be done. A municipal corporation does in the public interests what private interests do for themselves, only in a broader and wider way. A municipal authority touches every interest of the people; it touches their health and their civic virtue and everything that affects the well-being of the community. You do not want the most inflammatory oratory or the most
powerful politician on those bodies, but what you want is the most capable citizen who loves the people, who understands the people's wants, who is intensely devoted to the cause of social and civic progress, and who will apply his mind to that sound and efficient administration which ought to lie at the foundation of well-ordered civic government. That is what we want, and there is no doubt about it that no more fatal blunder can be made than to have municipal affairs carried on upon party lines. I have never yet spoken on a platform either in my Constituency or in any part of Ireland in favour of any candidate for municipal honours on party principles. And I would not do it, because I think there is too much involved, and I think it is a great mistake to introduce our conflicting contraversial issues into matters which are entirely domestic and social and civic. That is the reason that I say there is much larger justification for a proportional representation Bill in connection with our municipal and county affairs than there is in connection with our conduct of Parliamentary institutions. But is this a proportional representation Bill? I would have given it loyal and unfaltering support if it were a proportional representation Bill, but that is only part of its functions. It proposes here to set up a sort of House of Lords in Ireland over the local authorities I do not want to discuss again Clause 7, which has been denounced from every part of the House. That Clause states:
If the Local Government Board are satisfied, after such inquiry as they deem necessary, that any county council, district council, or town commissioners Have failed or are unable to perform all or any of the duties imposed upon them by or in pursuance of any Statute, the Board may by Order appoint some person to discharge the duties of the council or commissioners, or such of the duties as may be specified by the Order.
How does the Local Government Board come to be a sort of sacrosanct institution with the right of determining whether a local body discharges its duties well or not? If a local body were found guilty of corruption I could then see the force of this proposal, or if it were guilty of some heinous offence which could not be defended. But this gives the Local Government Board the power to say whether a local body discharges its duties not to its own satisfaction, not to the satisfaction of the electorate who have constituted its membership, but to the satisfaction of the Local Government Board. What if I pro-
posed a clause for insertion in this Bill enacting that "The various local authorities be empowered to dismiss the Local Government Board if they do not do their duty satisfactorily?" In my judgment that would be just as justifiable as to give this proposed power to a number of old, hoary reactionaries sitting in Dublin, who know as much about the common affairs of life as I do about the latest crisis in Japan. Those gentlemen are to set themselves up to determine whether a local council is doing its duty or not. Just at the time when we are aiming at more extended liberty and are trying to secure broader autonomy for Ireland, here comes the Local Government Board in the name of liberty and in the interests of proportional representation, and it asks us to accept the proposal of this kind with regard to the Local Government Board. With the exception of knowing that that body is composed of a number of old gentlemen, I do not know anything about them. I object to old age controlling me unless it has some other virtue. A more monstrous proposal I have never heard than to give these gentlemen the power to say to the elected representatives of the people that they shall submit to this august concern all that they think and all that they do and all that they say in order that the Local Government Board may say, "Quite right," or else "Clear out, and we will send a commissioner to do your work." Imagine the city of Belfast, which is not always perfect, despite what the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks—

Sir E. CARSON: I did not say it was, because the hon. Gentleman represents part of it.

Mr. DEVLIN: May I point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it was perfect when I represented it, until he became a Member for Belfast. Take the city of Belfast, and suppose, by one of those circuitous turns of fortune that three Nationalists were appointed members of the Local Government Board. They might think that many things the Belfast Corporation did were not justifiable. I know I am scratching my own imagination and the imagination of the right hon. Gentleman very far, but still in these curious times—when you have an Ulster Tory Member preaching Barcelonaism and Bolshevism and defending anarchy in Spain just to keep himself in the way because he may have to defend
anarchy again in Belfast—it is quite possible amidst all these changing fortunes that we might have such a body as a trinity of Nationalists on the Local Government Board, and what would be said if these gentlemen came down to the Belfast Corporation and said, "You may be discharging your duties satisfactorily to yourselves, and it may be all right so far as the electors are concerned. It is difficult to put our finger upon precisely what crime you have committed, but according to our immaculate judgment you are not conducting the affairs of this city properly. We suspend you, and we appoint a paid commissioner to take your place." This is the only legislation that the Coalition Government have evolved for Ireland since they came into operation. I am very glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman agrees with us that this is a proposal that cannot be defended, and that will not be accepted without protest from Ulster, and I hope he will be as violent as I shall be in resisting this proposal in Committee. But now that he is in his place may I ask him if he is in favour of the rights of minorities? Does he believe that minorities ought to have representation? I know that he believes that in certain things minorities should govern majorities, but as the principle of proportional representation, as apart and distinct from this measure altogether, gives to the people the only guarantee that minorities can have that they will be represented, I am surprised that he is opposing it.

Sir E. CARSON: I do not believe that it does.

Mr. DEVLIN: May I produce Sligo again. I hope the fresh introduction of Sligo will not cause the right hon. Gentleman any further perturbation. There are a number of specialists on this question here, and I hope they can convince the right hon. Gentleman that he is wrong in saying that proportional representation does not secure proper representation for minorities. It has been tried in Sligo. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I hear hon. Gentlemen sneering at Sligo, but what was wrong with Sligo? For nearly forty years Sligo was governed by an old Tory reactionary corporation, and Sligo is denounced to-day because it had to bear the inheritance of a corrupt Tory organisation. If it had to come to this Parliament to save it from bankruptcy it
was your extravagance that made it bankrupt, and other men of higher public probity had to take in hand the work and to transform the representation in order to save it from the evils which were brought upon it, but the right hon. Gentleman has told us that it is not a success. We are dealing with Irish towns and counties, and Sligo is a typical Irish borough.

Sir E. CARSON: I hope not.

Mr. DEVLIN: I hope it is not in the sense that other Irish boroughs have to bear the burden of the reactionary finance of the right hon. Gentleman's friends, but in other respects it is a fairly typical borough. The people of Sligo are as decent and respectable as in any other part of the world. Do not think there have not been bad finance and worse administration in other parts, even here in your immaculate England, but I am dealing with the typical case of Sligo, where this principle has been tried. What is the opinion of the Press of the various parties? The "Irish Times," one of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's chief organs—

Sir E CARSON: I beg your pardon; it is a Nationalist organ.

Mr. DEVLIN: I am really surprised at the right hon. Gentleman. I understood it was the most intellectual Press representative of the non-intellectual Tory party in Ireland.

Sir E. CARSON: May I confess to the hon. Member that for ten years I have never seen it.

Mr. DEVLIN: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had read that paper it would have done him all the good in the world. The last leading article that I read in the "Irish Times" was almost a replica of a speech delivered by my right hon. and learned Friend in his denunciation of the perfidy of the British Government, and therefore I am glad to congratulate him that his vituperative attack on the British Government did not find inspiration in the office of the "Irish Times." The "Irish Times" says:
The election has established beyond dispute two big things in favour of proportional representation. First, that it is a thoroughly workable system.
May I here relate a personal reminiscence to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I believed in proportional representation,
and I went to a lecture on it here, and I came out more ignorant than when I went in. The right hon. Gentleman never made the admission that I make. It was my stupidity—not the fault of the system, because here it is in working, and, according to the "Irish Times," it has been a great success, and also according to the "Independent," which is another Irish organ.

Sir E. CARSON: What is it?

Mr. DEVLIN: I do not know. The difficulty now is to know what is what, and who is who. I sometimes wonder where we are, when I hear the right hon. Gentleman denouncing the right of minorities to representation, and when I hear flowers of poetic oratory from the hon. and gallant Member for Bury St. Edmunds, in his advocacy of the necessity of putting moderate politicians in public places. When I hear these things, I wonder where I am. But all these newspapers one by one have stated that the system has been tried and been a success, and, strange to say, in Sligo there were no spoiled votes. I was not there myself, but my hon. and gallant Friend (Major Newman) was.

Major NEWMAN: I was not.

Mr. DEVLIN: My hon. and gallant Friend was not there, but he knew all about it. It was Mr. Humphreys who informed the hon. and gallant Gentleman, and, at a moment of unusual personal friendship and close co-operation, he has informed me that there were only forty spoiled votes. Surely if the poor people in Sligo can understand proportional representation, it is not a very big compliment which the right hon. Gentleman and myself pay ourselves if we say we are not able to understand it. I believe the right hon. Gentleman honestly is in favour of it, but he merely gathered his forces in the House to-night to denounce it in order to attack His Majesty's Government. His speech was not an attack upon proportional representation, but was a magnificent indictment on people who ought to be indicted. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman got them in the dock, and gave them all he did. The only regret I have in the matter is that the whole of them were not there. I have come to the conclusion that they got some whisper from the benches opposite that the right hon. Gentleman was to be on his feet this evening, and
They fled full soon in the month of June,
And bade the rest keep fighting.
I want to end as I began. I am in favour of the principle of proportional representation. The right hon. Gentleman insinuated for a moment that I was the author of the Bill. It was a very poor compliment to me.

Sir E. CARSON: I withdraw that.

Mr. DEVLIN: I am in favour of the principle of proportional representation, because it gives minorities the only chance of securing representation. I believe it is a fatal thing to keep minorities from exercising that influence which they ought to exercise. That is why I am in favour of it, and I have been in favour of it ever since I came into this Parliament. I object to certain Clauses in the Bill, and, unless I get an assurance that these Clauses will either be eliminated, or changed on the lines suggested, I question whether I will vote for the Bill. But no doubt the Government will carry it whether we vote for it or not, and subsequently we shall be able to deal with these objectionable parts of the Bill when we get into Committee. I do say, as one who is a genuine democrat, that I think you are making a fatal blunder in rejecting a proposal which gives to the minority some small measure of the power which its weight and authority ought to give. I know the tendency there is when parties are strong to take up the purely official and party attitude and to say, "We are the party, and we must remain." The parties, at all events, in this country are not permanent. Parties change more rapidly in this country than they do in Ireland, and the time may come when you may be in a minority, and you may be refused the exercise of your legitimate right as an important minority in determining things which touch your industries, your commerce and your life. Therefore, I say, apart altogether from the question of the application of this principle to Ireland, that principle which gives legitimate right to a minority of the population to have its fair share in the adjustment of all those questions that affect the minority as well as the majority, will always receive my support.

Major MORRISON-BELL: The House has listened with great pleasure to the remarks of the hon. and learned Member, and its only regret has been that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Edward Carson) has lost his right to reply by an earlier intervention in the Debate. We have had this
evening such a domestic Debate, that it hardly seems right for an English Member to intervene at all; but, as I suppose some of us will have to go into the Lobby, perhaps a few remarks on the subject touched on during the Debate will not come amiss. I have noticed previously in this House that Debates dealing particularly with this question have been always characterised by the absence, practically, of any remarks about the subject in question. To-night we have had the question of proportional representation touched on here and there, but, considering that this is a Bill chiefly to deal with this question, it has not been touched on too much. It has been asked, in the course of the Debate from the benches below the Gangway, What is the origin of this Bill? I do not pretend to be in the secrets of the Government, but I should think that it is quite obvious how this Bill comes to be put before the House. The principle of proportional representation got into a private Bill for the borough of Sligo. The election was held, and it was seen at once what an enormous success that principle had been. The whole of the Press of Ireland, as the hon. and learned Member who has just sat down has said, was unanimous in its favour, and I see in an account of that election that it was at once followed by requests from pearly every local authority that the principle should be adopted at their election. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] I cannot say every authority, but a great many authorities. It was not advocated, obviously, in the great boroughs in the North, but there was a very strong and almost unanimous opinion in favour of the Bill, I understand, and that must surely be the justification for the Government having brought in this Bill. The Mover of the Amendment did not touch very much upon the question of proportional representation, but the hon. Member who seconded it did, and I propose to deal very shortly with some of his remarks, just prefacing what I have to say by referring to the Amendment, which Apparently seems to contemplate that this principle is something quite new, and has not been tried in Ireland or in Great Britain. Of course the principle was adopted in the Home Rule Bill in 1912.

Mr. MOLES: For Parliamentary elections only.

Major MORRISON-BELL: Exactly; but the principle is the same, though its
application is different. This Amend-deals with the principle, and, of course, the principle has been adopted not only for Ireland but for England too, and was tried at the last election in university elections, and was apparently a great success. Therefore, as far as the Amendment goes, it would seem that there is nothing new, and there is no reason why the House should be at all nervous about its adoption now. But the hon. Member who seconded the Amendment expressed a great many fears as to whether this principle, if adopted, would work. Surely a sufficient answer to that is what happened in the Sligo election. The-reasons for that election we have heard from the hon. Member. He did not say much about the way in which the election worked out, but there is no doubt whatever that the result gave every satisfaction, and gave a representation in proportion to the number of votes cast. It was said that the principle was too complicated to be understood. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke for the Amendment told the House, in quoting one of the Clauses of the Bill, that he was unable to understand it, and he read the second part of Clause 10. I admit that when put into Parliamentary and legal phraseology it looks rather complicated, but that is due to the system by which it has to be put into words which do not make the meaning very clear at the first glance. But all that this Section (b) of Clause 10 means, when put into ordinary English, is that if a candidate has more votes than he wants his surplus vote is transferred to the next choice; or if a candidate is perfectly and hopelessly out of it at the bottom of the poll, and therefore eliminated, his vote is not lost, but transferred to the second preference, namely, to someone who does want the vote. That is the whole meaning of paragraph (6) of Clause 10, and I think it is capable of being understood by anybody who will read it carefully. In fact, it was not open to very much misunderstanding even in Sligo, where, it was said, quite a large proportion of the voters were illiterate. I think 10 per cent. was given as the number of voters who were illiterate, and, notwithstanding that, and the so-called complications of this system, only 1 per cent. of the votes were spoiled. The hon. Member who seconded this Amendment also said that he was perfectly certain that in any election held under this system a very small proportion of the
electors would go to the poll. I do not know really that he has any right to make that statement.

M. MOLES: May I interrupt the hon. and gallant Gentleman to explain that I made no such statement. What I said was that the universal experience was that you rarely got more than 50 per cent. of the poll; that is quite a different thing.

Major MORRISON-BELL: The hon. Member now says 50 per cent.

Mr. MOLES: I do not say it now; I said it before.

Major MORRISON-BELL: Without actually quoting the figure of 50 per cent. I do not think I in the least misrepresented the hon. Gentleman when I said that he said a small number of electors would go to the poll. I think 50 per cent. is small, and, therefore, I think he and I entirely agree. But I was going to say that I do not quite know upon what he bases his prophecy, for in this Sligo election, instead of 50 per cent. going to the poll on this entirely new system, which we were told would not be understood, no less than 73 per cent. of the electors went to the poll. And I should be inclined to prophesy 'that, instead of the numbers becoming smaller in the future, that number of 73 per cent. which was registered at the very first trial will, grow larger and larger, and we shall get up to 80 per cent. and possibly 90 per cent. of the poll. I think that 73 per cent. was a very encouraging figure on the very first occasion, and that there is every reason to hope that the interest shown at Sligo will not only not be less, but will be more in elections to come. The truth is that this system, which has so far justified itself in Sligo and given that small borough the honour of holding the very first election under it, and giving the lead to the rest of Ireland, if one may judge by the comments in the Press—that system is going to spread until every county council and every local authority will be elected by that system; and I do not think there is any doubt that inside ten years, if not five years, we shall have the elections for this House under proportional representation. It is unfortunate at the present moment that large sections of the community should be unrepresented in this House, just as it is unfortunate that large sections of Ireland should not be represented in this House. I do not believe that even though this system may be established it will do away with all
the difficulties, but rather will increase them, for it will alter very considerably the whole system under which Parliamentary business is done here. But it will certainly do this; it will ensure that every minority, or every sufficient minority, will be able to send its members to this House, and have its views represented here. I am not afraid of what one hon. Member below the Gangway mentioned in his speech. I am not afraid of having what is called the crank here. I do not believe that this system will introduce cranks into this House.

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must confine his remarks to the Bill.

Major MORRISON-BELL: I am very much obliged to you, Sir, for bringing me back to the point. The hon. Member did refer to cranks, and I presume he meant cranks in local government elections. As I said, I do not think that the electorate in local government elections will be likely to vote for many of these social cranks. I believe it is rather a bogey introduced against this system, and I hope that by the adoption of this Bill the way will be paved to elections on this principle not only in Ireland but in England also for purposes of local government.

Major NEWMAN: A few years ago the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken was a pronounced exponent of proportional representation.

Major MORRISON-BELL: I was.

Major NEWMAN: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has given us admirable speeches in favour of that system, and I am glad he is going to do so in the future. With some trepidation I would follow him, but I do it partly because I am a believer, and have been for many years, in proportional representation; and secondly, I have the honour to be an Irishman. I greatly regret the opposition that has been put forward. I quite understand the principle of it. Opponents do not want this thing tried in their own constituencies. They say, "Try it on the dog." That observation has been used in this House before, and has been one of the methods of argument against which we have had to contend. Everyone has said, "Why not try it somewhere else?" Undoubtedly if it had not been for that argument Parliament would have carried proportional representation for the recent election. We can say this to Ulster: that
proportional representation is going to be tried in Scotland, which will be before Ireland, and that will, at any rate, explode their opposition on the theory of the dog. I have been very anxious to see proportional representation tried for the election of Members of this House, but I have always thought it would be far better to start the method at local elections. Take your local electors and train the country through them to this method of election, and so gradually bring all up so that the method may be brought into play for Parliamentary elections. We are having our chance in Scotland under the Education Act, and then, I trust, it will follow in Ireland. I may say this—which is an open secret—that if the President of the Local Government Board in this country had not had so very many big Bills to deal with this Session, he would have endeavoured to bring in a Bill to have English local authorities elected under proportional representation. The Proportional Representation Society have had more than one resolution sent by urban and rural district councils from various parts of the country asking them to try to get this method applied to local authorities.
I would ask the House to go back to 1898, when local government was carried for Ireland. If in 1898 we had had the method of proportional representation for the election of Irish county councils the whole course of Irish history, I am convinced, might have been very different. That Bill was introduced with a chorus of approval from all parts of the House, and the Second Reading was carried by a big majority, only twenty Members voting against it. One of those twenty was the present Prime Minister. The then Member for Waterford, the late Mr. John Redmond, made an eloquent speech in favour of the Bill. Perhaps I may read to the House his last few words:
No man's politics or religion should be allowed to be a bar to him if he desires to serve his country on one of the new bodies.…
The almost impassable gulf that separated groups and parties would (continued Mr. Redmond) be for the first time bridged by the working of the new Local Government Act. We have single-member constituencies, and the county councils were captured in the first few years of their working. I myself put up and was defeated in the election of 1898 in my own Division. I fought a hard fight and
obtained 600 votes against about 800. I was standing as a non-party man, and merely as a man who wanted to take a hand in the work of the county. In two adjoining divisions two Unionist friends put up and were defeated. I say that undoubtedly, had we had proportional representation I or one of my friends would have been returned to do the county council work; we would then have been helping in the local government of Ireland. The hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite gave figures showing how small was the Unionist vote in the South of Ireland. He adopted a very ordinary method of reckoning it up. He simply counted how many partisans there were, or units, forgetting that there are a certain number of Catholic Unionists. If he will do me the honour some time of coming to stay with me in the South of Ireland, I will take him to see a good many Catholic Unionists who are very staunch in their Unionism. One should not forget that fact in dealing with politics in the South of Ireland.
That, however, is not the reason that I support this Bill—merely because it would give us Unionists a certain representation in the local councils. An hon. Member has told us that in the borough of Cork we are in a ratio of about 12 per cent., and in the county of Cork of about 9 per cent. I support this Bill chiefly because it will give the man of ordinary weight in local affairs, the man whom everybody trusts, his chance of taking an interest in local affairs. Frankly, I do not care whether that particular man is a Unionist, a Nationalist, or a Sinn Feiner. If he can persuade his fellow citizens and the ratepayers that if he is elected he will go to the council with one object and one object only, and that is the administration of their affairs well and wisely. I say, though personally he may be prepared to vote against me for membership of this House, I should be inclined to vote for him in local matters. One hon. Member has told us, and quite rightly, that what we really want as members of these local bodies in Ireland are business men who will remember that they are business men and that the bodies are business corporations. As I say, proportional representation will, at any rate, give us some chance of the middle interest being elected to take its share in the local affairs of Ireland.
It has been said—perhaps not in this Debate, but outside the House—that if a
man is an Irishman he cannot forget his politics. If a good business man who is prepared to put his politics aside and to go into a local council and conduct the business there properly is up against a patriot who, perhaps, has "served time," in gaol, that that patriot will win all the time. I quite admit that that would probably be the case in a single-member division. If you had twenty single-member divisions for the counties of Cork or Tipperary, and in each division one man against another, in those twenty certainly the patriot would win. With proportional representation the feeling would be different, and the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth choice would probably be given to the business man who would try and save the ratepayer's pocket, and in that way business men would be elected to these local bodies. That is bound to happen under proportional representation, for it would give the middle interest in Ireland a chance. In this way the elector would have a chance of being represented by a man who without being a patriot might be a man of weight and honesty, but you will be doing something to secure more efficient local government. I will conclude by quoting a few lines from a Sligo Sinn Fein paper. The "Sligo Champion," on the 5th January this year, referring to this system, said, "It is very plain and very simple." When Sinn Fein papers say that, it is good enough for me, and I think it should be good enough for the House of Commons.

Captain CHARLES CRAIG: Something has been said with reference to confusing Unionists and Catholics by the hon. Member who has just spoken. He says it is quite wrong for us to say that there are no Unionists who are Catholics. We have never said that, because we know that there are a certain number of Catholics in Ireland who are as good Unionists, for instance, as myself, but that number is so small that it is a negligible quantity, and it is perfectly right, speaking roughly, to say that the number of Protestants in Ireland represent roughly the number of Unionists in that country. If you add to that the number of Roman Catholic Unionists it would not mean more than 2 per cent. of the population and really there is nothing in that point, and when we speak of Protestants we speak of Unionists.

Mr. JOHN JONES: That is not fair.

Captain CRAIG: Has the hon. Member opposite lived in Ireland?

Mr. JONES: Yes, I was born and bred in Ireland.

Captain CRAIG: All your life?

Mr. JONES: I have lived in Ireland the best part of my life.

Captain CRAIG: I consider that I know a great deal more about Ireland than the hon. Member who interrupts me.

Mr. JONES: I do not think you do.

Captain CRAIG: I know there are a number of Catholics who are Unionists, but it is perfectly right roughly to say that the Protestants of Ireland represent Unionists. The hon. Member opposite said he was very glad to hear that my hon. and gallant Friend (Major Morrison-Bell) has declared himself to be an advocate of proportional representation. I wonder what it is that has brought my hon. and gallant Friend round to that view.

Major NEWMAN: Common sense!

Captain CRAIG: My hon. and gallant Friend had the misfortune to be a prisoner of war with me in Germany, and we organised a very interesting trial election there on this question of proportional representation, which gave us a great deal of interest and amusement for some time. I remember on that occasion asking if he was in favour of proportional representation, and he told me he had not definitely made up his mind. I would like to ask him if the result of the Sligo election finally turned the scale in favour of proportional representation?

Major MORRISON-BELL: What really changed me was the fact that re-distribution had been got out of the way.

Captain CRAIG: I thought perhaps it was the Sligo election which, has persuaded my hon. and gallant Friend towards the side of proportional representation. I look upon this proposal of the Government as very serious indeed-The House will remember that at the beginning of this Session we spent a considerable time in discussing how the very important measures which the Government had in hand could be got through the House. The complaint was that there
was not enough time at the disposal of the House of Commons under the old system to get these important measures through, and a very drastic re-arrangement of the business of the House was agreed to for the express purpose of getting these great measures through the House.
How is the Government using this valuable time which the new Rules have given to them? They are using it amongst other ways by bringing in a Bill like this, which is not a Bill arising out of the necessities of the country after the war. This is a Bill of which there was no indication given at the General Election, and after all it is a great constitutional change, and it is usual, according to the Parliamentary practice of this country, to give some indication at a General Election of the measures which the Government is going to bring in as soon as the House meets. No indication of any sort was given that such a measure as this will be brought in. Not only is that so, but this Bill is in direct opposition to the wishes of over 90 per cent. of the representatives of Ireland. Of course they are not all here, but, as everybody knows, the Sinn Fein party, the largest party in Ireland, opposes this Bill as strongly as we do. From what we gather in the Debate this Bill is largely directed against the Sinn Fein party, therefore it is safe to assume that they are not in favour of it. The party to which I belong, which is the next largest party representing Ireland, numbering twenty-two, is absolutely opposed to this Bill. Who are in favour of it? There are six Nationalist Members and two Unionist Members in favour of this measure and ninety-two or ninety-three Irish representatives against it. I say that it is a most wanton act for the Government to bring in a Bill which is so absolutely opposed to the wishes of their own supporters as this Bill is. I would go further and ask the Government to explain what is the object of this Bill? We have to grope through the various speeches from various quarters of the House to find out for ourselves what is the real object of this Bill. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced the measure did not make it at all clear, at all events to me, what is the object of the Bill. He said that he wanted to see certain interests, which were not represented at present, represented on the county and borough councils. Is that the
real reason? I think, probably, the real reason is to be found in the speeches of other Members, namely, that this is an attempt on the part of the Government to save certain county councils and other local councils in Ireland from the Sinn Fein party.
10.0 P.M.
I do not think that the Bill has really been introduced from the point of view of giving the Unionists in the South of Ireland better representation on county and district councils. At any rate, if that is the object of the Government, I think it has been abundantly and absolutely proved that the Bill is altogether futile. It is quite true, as my hon. Friend for one of the Divisions of Dublin has said, that the Bill possibly would give one or two more seats on the Dublin Corporation to Unionists, and it might secure the return of a few Unionists here and there scattered over the South and West of Ireland on county and district councils, but those Unionists would be so few in number that they would not have the slightest effect on the policy pursued by any of the councils to which they were elected. If that is so, what improvement is to be gained by putting them on? Those hon. Members who were present in the earlier stages of the Debate may remember that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Colonel Guinness), in rather a plaintive voice, asked us Unionist Members who are opposing this Bill why we objected to something that would do the Unionists in the South of Ireland good and would do us no harm. If that were absolutely so, it would be a good question to ask us, but the hon. Member for Waterford (Captain Redmond) a few moments afterwards told us that the reason we did not want this Bill was that we should suffer considerably by it in Ulster. He proceeded to point out that it was highly probable, if not certain, that in the city of Derry we should lose control of the council. That at once does away with the point which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds made, that this was a Bill which would do them a lot of good and us no harm—if it is true, as the hon. Member for Waterford has said, that we are going to have the municipal control of one of the most important cities in the North of Ireland taken out of the hands of the Unionists, who have controlled it equitably and well for many years, and put into the hands of people corresponding to those who made such a mess of
affairs in Sligo. In Derry some 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. of the rates are paid by Unionists, and the same proportion of the property and business of that town is in the hands of Unionists. Yet if this Bill passes—we have the word of the hon. Member for Waterford for it—the control of that city will be taken out of the hands of the Unionists and handed over to the Nationalists. If that is so, I maintain that we have very good reason for opposing the Bill. Some of my hon. Friends have suggested that the same thing would happen in other parts of Ulster. Quite apart from the effect that it may have upon Ulster, however, I maintain that we have great reason to complain of the action of the Government in introducing this Bill. We object very strongly to Ireland being used as a ground on which to carry out these experiments. Why did this House last year or the year before—unfortunately I was away at the time—turn down this proposal of proportional representation time after time? Obviously, it was because they did not think that it was a good thing for the country. I maintain, when you examine the question, that you will find that the conditions are just the same in Ireland as they are in England. In Ireland we are divided into Unionists, Nationalists, and Sinn Feiners. Does anybody suggest that there is no sharp divisions between the various parties who seek to get representatives on the local councils in England? The divisions between us may not be the same, but they are there just to the same extent. When this question was before the House with regard to England, the House would not have it. It defeated it. Why therefore are we to be made the ground for trying an experiment which was so conclusively and decisively disposed of in this House only a year ago?
A great deal has been made of the case of Sligo. Sligo is like the blessed word Mesopotamia. Apparently, it contains irrefutable arguments in favour of proportional representation. Things in Sligo, as the House has been informed, had come to such a horrible pass that the unfortunate inhabitants were ready to try any experiment to better their conditions. Somebody came along and proposed proportional representation. In such a state of affairs it was quite easy to tell that proportional representa-
tion was going to have a certain effect. The people of Sligo were ready and willing to grasp at any straw which would get them out of the horrible condition of affairs into which they had got themselves. It is no wonder that they even had the courage to tackle a proposal of proportional representation. It was a foregone conclusion. Before the experiment was tried it was perfectly clear to everybody that it would have the effect which it did have. The whole difference between Sligo and this case is that there the people had examined the question and were satisfied it would do what they wanted. It is very different in the rest of Ireland. We in the North of Ireland are absolutely satisfied that proportional representation will not do what the Government thinks that it is going to do, and in view of the fact that we have not been consulted and in view of the fact that just over 90 per cent. of the representatives of Ireland in this House are unquestionably opposed to proportional representation, I say that it is—

Mr. A. WILLIAMS: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman give any evidence of the fact that the Sinn Fein Members are against it?

Captain CRAIG: No; I can only give what is called presumptive evidence. This Debate has shown pretty plainly to everybody that the Bill is directed against Sinn Feiners, and, if it is going to lessen their position in Ireland, we may safely say that they are opposed to it. I have never heard the suggestion put forward by anybody that they are in favour of it. Presuming that the Sinn Feiners continue to be in as great strength as they were at the General Election, they would sweep the country—the county councils, the district councils, and every municipal council in the South and West of Ireland—just as they have swept the Parliamentary boroughs and constituencies. Therefore, I think I am perfectly safe in saying that they are against it. I would like to reiterate this point, that 90 per cent. of the representatives of Ireland are opposed to this Bill. We have very often heard speeches from the Front Bench telling us we should not oppose Bills which are desired by the majority in Ireland. But here is a case where over 90 per cent. of the people are opposed to a measure, and yet the Government are proposing to pass it in spite of that fact! One hon. Member told us there was evidence that this
Bill was approved by a very large section of the Irish people and that the Press particularly were in favour of it. But again I would point out that it has been the practice in this House to judge of the support of a policy or measure by the attitude of the representatives of the country affected towards it. All my friends from Ulster, twenty-two in number, are against this Bill. We have every reason to believe that all the Sinn Fein Members—although absent from this House—are absolutely opposed to it, and I say the Government are doing a very uncalled for and wanton act in disregarding the wishes of that portion of the party which supports them to the extent it has done in this War. We people from Ulster claim that during the War we have done our part to support the Government as firmly and as well as any other part of the United Kingdom, and we think it is a very ungrateful act on the part of the Government, that, on almost the first opportunity it has had, it should have gone out of its way, without even taking the trouble to consult us and to find out what the true results of this Bill are going to be, to seek to apply this Bill against our strongest wishes. We certainly shall force our opposition to a Division, and shall fight the Bill at every stage, doing our level best to defeat it.

Mr. SAMUELS: The Government accept full responsibility for introducing this Bill. They agree it is a very serious measure, but the circumstances under which it has been produced must be known to everybody resident in Ireland who knows anything of what is going on there. For years past, since 1878, the machine has captured the whole representation on local authorities in Ireland, and I should have hardly thought it necessary to point that out to anybody who knows what is going on there. I deny that for one moment on this question of local government any question of creed, or any question of politics has influenced the Government in introducing this measure. What we have to look at is what is going on in Ireland, and I ask my hon. Friends from Ulster to face the facts. At the General Election, on the Parliamentary franchise, 75 per cent. of the representation has gone over to the Sinn Fein party. What is the declared object of that party? It is to make local government in Ireland absolutely impossible and to break down British reign and rule in Ireland by cap-
turing local bodies, as was done by Hungary when Austria was forced into giving her independence. There they began by capturing the local bodies.

Major O'NEILL: Is it not the fact that the right hon. Gentleman never mentioned this question of the Sinn Feiners in his speech moving the Second Reading of this Bill? May we take it that that was the real reason why this Bill has been introduced?

Mr. SPEAKER: I thought the hon. Member rose to ask a question. It is not open to him now to put forward arguments.

Mr. SAMUELS: I did not mention the words "Sinn Fein," but I thought everybody understood from me that, owing to the impulse of certain political feeling in Ireland, the position the Government had to face was a serious one, and I pointed out it was a matter affecting not merely local and civic administration but State administration also. I pointed out that many millions of money had been advanced already by the Government—I think the loans to local authorities now total £26,000,000—and it is the local authorities who have to administer this vast sum. The country, too, is going to undertake great schemes for the public health, great housing schemes, and great schemes of reconstruction, which are to be applied to Ireland, and no one has been more insistent that they should be so applied than my hon. Friend from Ulster. Who are you going to trust the administration of these things to? Are you going to trust them to bodies elected on the present franchise and under the present machinery—bodies which have been absolutely captured by people who call the rest of the United Kingdom "the enemy," and whose object is to break down the rule of the "enemy" and make the whole administration in Ireland impossible? I do not know whether Sinn Feiners are in favour of this Bill or not, but it is a remarkable thing that Arthur Griffith, the intellectual originator of Sinn Fein, its most able protagonist, a most brilliant writer, a man of great ability, and a most dangerous opponent, is himself one of the vice-presidents of the Irish branch of the Proportional Representation Society. All I know is that when the election took place at Sligo, Sinn Fein only gained a certain proportion of the representation, and the Sinn Fein papers unanimously
spoke in the highest terms not only of the system of the election but of the method in which it was conducted and its results.
Having to face this state of affairs, what was the duty of the Government? It was necessary to bring in a Bill sometime or other to deal with elections. Could we perpetuate the old system with its disastrous effect that business men, professional men, and commercial men, North and South, should, on account of political feeling or dogma, have been excluded practically ever since 1878? The hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. W. Coote), in his most able and energetic speech, gave us the figures for the province of Ulster. I was astonished to hear that in Monaghan and Cavan there was not a single representative of the minority. In Monaghan and Cavan there should be a fair representation, I do not say of Unionists, I do not say of politics, but of people who, by training, capacity, commercial standing or position as agriculturists ought to be on the county councils and directing county affairs. What have county councils to do with party politics? What have they to do with the fourteen points or with the Peace Conference?

Mr. MacVEAGH: Or the Thirty-Nine Articles?

Mr. SAMUELS: Yes, if you take up any paper to-day you see that the county councils and the urban councils are directing their attention to these things, and not thinking about drainage and sewage. What has dogma to do with dustbins? We want to see if these things cannot be changed, for the old system has broken down in the North and in the South. I do not know myself, and I have not been able to gather from the speeches of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Ulster Benches, what they apprehend. Do they apprehend that the grit of the North is going to be swept away on account of proportional representation which might change a few-seats on the corporation of Belfast or Derry, and which might thus affect the composition of those great corporations? Even if the Roman Catholics were conceded a few seats on the Corporation of Belfast or of Derry—[HON. MEMBERS: "They have them!"]—I do not think that the men who get in would be returned for anything except their business capacity, for North Ireland is hard-headed on these matters. I do not think they will give themselves up to enthusiasm for other people's
business. In the South we are too much given to thinking what is going on in this House and another place, and neglecting what is going on in our own townships and urban districts. There are numbers of hard-thinking men—good business men, men of integrity and honour, and women too—plenty of them—who are most anxious to take a proper and reasonable share, not in politics, but in the administration of their local affairs. What chance have they under the present system? None. There is one man up for the area. He has the ticket and you must vote for him.

Mr. MacVEAGH: It is the same in England. You call them tickets in Ireland and coupons in England.

Mr. SAMUELS: Coupon or ticket, or whatever it is, he is up for the area and you have the one chance of voting either for him or against him. But it makes a great difference if you can bring in a second, third or fourth preference, and anyone who knows the want of moral courage that prevails through a great part of Ireland knows that there are plenty of men who will say, "Mickey, I give you the vote." So he did, but he gave a vote to Jim and to Tom and to the rest of them down the list too, and if you give a second, third and fourth preference it will greatly affect their elections. Hon. Members have forgotten what has happened in Scotland. The Scottish elections are coming next month and they have had the effect, under proportional representation, under the Education Act, as I have been assured on the very highest authority, of bringing forward a number of candidates who would never have stood under former circumstances—men devoted entirely to education—and they will very likely have better representation than ever before on the Scottish Education Board.
My right hon. Friend (Sir E. Carson) said the Bill gives the Local Government Board far too much power with regard to the delimitation of areas. It is exactly the same power as was in the Act of 1898, neither better nor worse. Power was always given to the Local Government Board to map out the areas, and they have always shown perfect impartiality and fairness in regard to the matter. As to Clause 7, it is a very important Clause, and one on which the Government must insist. We must not let the machine of local government break down. There is ample precedent for the Clause. Before
the Local Government Act of 1898 was passed, under the old Poor Law Acts, the Local Government Board was able, if the guardians broke down and ceased to do their work, to put it into the hands of two or three persons to carry on the administration of the Poor Law system. Under the Act of 1898 itself powers are given in cases where the road authority neglects its duties to transfer them to individuals. The same thing applies to the Public Health Act in Ireland. If they neglect sewage or one or other of their duties they are to be entrusted to the administration of persons appointed by the Local Government Board, and its officials carry them out and afterwards the administration can be restored to the local guardians. The very Clause that stands in this Bill is incorporated in the Sligo Bill, and the principle of it in almost the same words is embodied in the great Bill dealing with the housing of the people in England. Under these circumstances, I ask the House to pass the Second Reading of this Bill. There was never a Bill so called for in the public Press of Ireland as this Bill, and until this Amendment was put down upon the Paper we did not know that any responsible body in Ireland was opposed to the Bill.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down will he tell us about the summer elections?

Mr. SAMUELS: As I said, there is a great deal to be said for the summer elections, certainly in regard to the county elections. But there is the question as to whether it is not desirable, when the new register comes into force at the end of November, that as soon as possible an election for both the urban and the county areas should take place upon that register. Of course, any views that may be pressed upon us in Committee will receive the most careful and anxious consideration. I ask that we may now have the Second Reading.

Mr. JOHN JONES: rose—

HON. MEMBERS: Divide, divide!

Mr. JONES: The time I shall occupy will not require any expressions of indignation from hon. Members. As no Member of the party with which I am connected has spoken, I claim the indulgence of the House. I heard to-night that the
Sinn Feiners and the Unionists in Ireland are agreed in opposition to this Bill. That is one of the reasons why I shall vote for the Bill. If those who are opposed to real reform in Ireland, and who are out for complete separation from Great Britain, are prepared to associate themselves with those who have been the hereditary enemies of Irish democracy, I think it is about time that sensible men in Great Britain should realise where they are. I am speaking as an Irishman with a Welsh name, but I hope I am not a welsher. As a member of the Celtic race, and as a member of a big industrial organisation, I would ask hon. Members opposite to realise where they are. Whenever there has been great industrial trouble in Great Britain the first claim of hon. Gentlemen opposite has been that there should be a proper vote of the men taken before any drastic action is entered upon. That is to say, that before the executive or the constituted authority take any drastic action they should consult the people whom they claim to represent. Proportional representation means that all sections, whatever their views may be, shall have equal citizen rights. That in so far as their numbers gave them the right to representation the representation shall be guaranteed. Up to now in Ireland we have been cracking one another's skulls. Now we are going to start counting them, and some of our Friends object to the process. They would rather have the old, antiquated method than the more respectable method. In the North of Ireland you have one kind of majority and in the rest of Ireland you have another kind of majority. The Sinn Feiners have come in, and not because of any constitutional idea, not because of the principle contained in the proposition of proportional representation, we have the odium theologium introduced to try to destroy the possibility of real constitutional reform in Ireland.
Suppose our Friends opposite realise their ambition. They will be able to go up and down Great Britain and say, "Ireland is impossible, for the Sinn Feiners are in control." Consequently, Irishmen, Englishmen, Welshmen, and Scotsmen will be brought into antagonism against each other, on the basis of national prejudice and racial dislikes. Therefore, we as Labour Members, whatever may be the consequences to ourselves, say that if we are a minority we have got to suffer, for
the Government is with the majority, but it is not right for Ireland to be divided up into sections. Whether a man comes from the South, West, East, or North of Ireland after all he is only an Irishman, and if his votes are sufficient to entitle him to representation he has a right to representation based on such votes as he can get in the ballot-box. Any other kind of government means only bureaucracy or autocracy; therefore we as Labour Members support proportional representation. I come from a place where we are in a majority on the local authority, but we would like to see proportional representation there, so that those who are opposed to us would have their fair share of representation. All sections of the community have the right to representation. This House of Commons cannot pretend to represent the people if

Division No. 16.]
AYES.
[10.34 p.m.


Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.
Graham, W. (Edinburgh)
Morison, T. B. (Inverness)


Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte
Gray, Major E.
Morrison-Bell, Major A. C.


Ainsworth, Captain C.
Green, J. F. (Leicester)
Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert


Astbury, Lt.-Com. F. W.
Gregory, Holman
Murray, Dr. D. (Western Isles)


Atkey, A. R.
Greig, Col. James William
Nail, Major Joseph


Baird, John Lawrence
Griffiths, T. (Pontypool)
Neal, Arthur


Baldwin, Stanley
Griggs, Sir Peter
Newman, Major J. (Finchley, Mddx.)


Balfour, George (Hampstead)
Guest, Major O. (Leices., Loughb'ro'.)
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. (Exeter)


Barnes, Major H. (Newcastle, E.)
Guinness, Lt.-Col. Hon. W. E. (B. St. E.)
Norman, Major Rt. Hon. Sir Henry


Barnston, Major Harry
Hallwood, A.
Norris, Colonel Sir Henry G.


Bell, Lieut.-Col. W. C. H. (Devizes)
Hall, Admiral
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William


Benn, Sir Arthur S. (Plymouth)
Hartshorn, V.
Palmer, Brig.-Gen. G. (Westbury)


Benn, Com. Ian Hamilton (G'nwich)
Hayday, A.
Parker, James


Benn, Capt. W. (Leith)
Herbert, Dennis (Hertford)
Pease, Rt. Hon. Herbert Pike


Bennett, T. J.
Hilder, Lieut.-Col. F.
Perkins, Walter Frank


Billing, Noel Pemberton
Hinds, John
Pownail, Lt.-Col. Assheton


Blake, Sir Francis Douglas
Hoare, Lt.-Col. Sir Samuel J. G.
Pratt, John William


Borwick, Major G. O.
Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy
Prescott, Major W. H.


Bowerman, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Hood, Joseph
Pulley, Charles Thornton


Breese, Major C. E.
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Raffan, Peter Wilson


Broad, Thomas Tucker
Hope, Lt.-Col. Sir J. (Midlothian)
Raw, Lt.-Col. Dr. N.


Brown, Captain D. C. (Hexham)
Hopkins, J. W. W.
Renwick, G.


Buchanan, Lieut.-Col. A. L. H.
Hopkinson, Austin (Mossley)
Roberts, F. O. (W. Bromwich)


Buckley, Lt.-Col. A.
Horne, Sir Robert (Hillhead)
Robinson, T. (Stretford, Lancs.)


Carr, W. T.
Irving, Dan
Roundell, Lt.-Col. R. F.


Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Oxford Univ.)
Jameson, Major J. G.
Rowlands. James


Chadwick, R. Burton
Jephcott, A. R.
Samuels, Rt. Hon. A. W. (Dublin Univ.)


Cockerill, Brig.-Gen. G. K.
Jesson, C.
Sanders, Colonel Robert Arthur


Colfox, Major W. P.
Jodrell, N. P.
Seager, Sir William


Conway, Sir W. Martin
Johnson, L. S.
Sexton, James


Cooper, Sir Richard Ashmele
Johnston, J.
Shaw, Hon. A. (Kilmarnock)


Coote, Colin R. (Isle of Ely)
Jones, Sir Evan (Pembroke)
Shortt, Rt. Hon. E.


Cope, Major W. (Glamorgan)
Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)
Smith, Harold (Warrington)


Craik, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)
Smith, W. (Wellingborough)


Davies, Sir Joseph (Crewe)
Jones, J. (Silvertown)
Sprot, Col. Sir Alexander


Dockrell, Sir M.
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen)
Stanier, Capt. Sir Beville


Doyle, N. Grattan
Jones, Wm. Kennedy (Hornsey)
Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F. (Preston)


Edge, Captain William
Law, A. J. (Rochdale)
Steel, Major S. Strang


Edwards, Major J. (Aberavon)
Law, Rt Hon. A. Bonar (Glasgow)
Stephenson, Col. H. K.


Elliot, Capt. W. E. (Lanark)
Lewis, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Univ. Wales)
Stewart, Gershom


Eyres-Monsell, Com.
Lister, Sir R. Ashton
Strauss, Edward Anthony


Farquharson, Major A. C.
Lort-Williams, J.
Sturrock, J. Leng-


Fell, Sir Arthur
Lunn, William
Sugden, Lieut. W. H.


Foreman, H.
M'Curdy, Charles Albert
Surtees, Brig.-Gen. H. C.


Ferestier-Walker, L.
Maclean, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (Midlothian)
Sutherland, Sir William


Fraser, Major Sir Keith
M'Lean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Talbot, G. A. (Hemel Hempstead)


Galbraith, Samuel
Mallalieu, Frederick William
Taylor, J. (Dumbarton)


Gibbs, Colonei George Abraham
Molson, Major John Elsdale
Thomas, Brig-Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)


Gilmour, Lt.-Col. John
Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Moritz
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, S.)


Gianville, Harold James
Moore-Brabazon, Lt.-Col. J. C. T.
Thomson, T. (Middlesbrough, W.)

by any political arrangement or any arrangement made behind the backs of the people it claims to have an autocratic, a democratic, or any other kind of majority which is not a fair representation of the people. I support the Bill on general principles. Even if it meant losing seats in this House, we think that democracy is a principle that ought to be preserved, and therefore in every locality we say that every section of the community should have its fair representation. I hope that the Bill will be carried, and that eventually its principles will be applied to all the United Kingdom, and that we shall no longer be governed by a minority.

Question put,
That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question.

The House divided: Ayes, 170; Noes, 27.

Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)
Watson, Captain John Bertrand
Worsfold, T. Cate


Waddington, R.
White, Col. G. D. (Southport)
Young, Sir F. W. (Swinden)


Wallace, J.
Wigan, Brig.-Gen. John Tyson
Young, Robert (Newton, Lancs.)


Walsh, S. (Ince, Lancs.)
Williams, A. (Consett, Durham)
Young, William (Perth and Kinress)


Ward-Jackson, Major C. L.
Williams, Col. P. (Middlesbrough)



Ward, Col. L. (Kingston-upon-Hull)
Williams, Col. Sir R. (Dorset. W.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Lord Edmund Talbot and Capt. Guest.


Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Wilson, Col. Lestie (Reading)



Waterson, A. E.
Woods, Sir Robert





NOES.


Archdale, Edward M.
Donald, T.
Moles, Thomas


Barnett, Captain Richard W.
Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir Fred (Dulwich)
O'Neill, Capt. Hon. Robert W. H.


Burn, T. H. (Belfast)
Hambro, Angus Valdemar
Reid, D. D.


Carson, Rt. Han. Sir Edward H.
Hamilton, Major C. G. C. (Altrincham)
Samuel, S. (Wandswworth, Putney)


Cautley, Henry Strother
Kerr-Smiley, Major P.
Whitla, Sir William


Coats, Sir Stuart
Lindsay, William Arthur
Wild, Sir Ernest Edward


Coots, W. (Tyrone, S.)
Lloyd, George Butler
Wilson, Daniel M. (Down, W.)


Cory, Sir Clifford John (St. Ives)
Lonsdale, James R.



Davison, Sir W. H. (Kensington)
Lowther, Col. C. (Lonsdale, Lancs.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. R. McNeill and Captain Craig.


Dixon, Captain H.
M'Guffin, Samuel

WAR CHARITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Mr. Morison): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
This is a very brief Bill, and the necessity for it arises because, after the cessation of hostilities, certain charities in Scotland found themselves in the possession of funds which they could not distribute because the object for which the money had been subscribed to those charities no longer existed. The most familiar case is that of the charitable funds which were raised for the very deserving purpose of assisting our prisoners of war in Germany. In Scotland it is impossible to distribute these funds now without judicial authority, and the ordinary process which is involved in that matter is to present a petition to one of the divisions of the Court of Session for authority to devote the funds to an object which is nearly connected with that for which the funds had been subscribed. In order to obviate the expense and delay of that procedure, this Bill proposes that the committee which held the funds should be entitled to distribute them in accordance with some cognate scheme which has been approved of by the Local Government Board, or that the charitable body should have the right to hand them over to some charitable institution approved by the Local Government Board. Accordingly, the abject and the scope of the Bill is
simply to enable those charitable bodies to distribute their money now in accordance with the law, and to relieve those who have administered these charities of the responsibility which they held under the original statute in connection with these funds. The Bill has already been passed in another place, and I venture to ask the House to allow it to pass through all its stages now.

Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I think it is recognised that some machinery such as is provided in this Bill is necessary to deal with the situation which has been created in regard to war charities in Scotland. I believe in England there is no such similar machinery provided. I believe that they have to make an appeal to the Court in order to obtain permission to transfer a sum of money to any particular purpose, which might have no relation to the object for which the money was originally subscribed. I hope my hon. and learned Friend will not take all the stages to-night. I should be prepared to propose in Committee that the scheme proposed by the Local Government Board in Scotland should lie upon the Table of the House, and receive the assent of the House before it became law. I am sure it will create a deal of controversy as to the way in which the money is to be disposed of. Personally, I am not at all sure that the Local Government Board is the best body which might be selected for this purpose. I only hope my hon. and learned Friend will not press it to-night, so that any Members may have an opportunity of moving Amendments in Committee if they desire to do so.

Mr. WILLIAM GRAHAM: Members of the House are well aware that in Scotland, as in other parts of the country,
during the War a very large number of committees sprang up for the purpose of collecting funds for various War charities, and also for the purpose of disposing of them as long as the need existed. There is no doubt in Scotland at the present time a very large amount of money which we might regard as being temporarily difficult to dispose of because of the cessation of the War and the disappearance of need for which the funds were subscribed. Unfortunately, this Bill proposes to place it in the power of committees which were appointed in the various localities to dispose of their balances, but I want to emphasise most strongly that many of the committees were not in the least democratic in character. They were quite useful for the purpose for which they were created, but the people will require some say in the disposal of the money which remains over. This will lead, I am very much afraid, in some of the larger communities in Scotland, to a wild scramble on the part of the various charitable associations and agencies for the benefit of funds which survive, and that, I think, is highly undesirable. I would very much rather that the Government, in introducing this Bill, had proposed that we should have some centralised machinery whereby the money might be disposed of, and I had intended to suggest that it might be handed over to some agency, to some local authority, town or county council, or, at any rate, some popularly elected body in Scotland, which would apply the money to the best of their ability in accordance with the intentions of the people who subscribed the funds, and more particularly under the protection of some control on the part of the people through these popularly elected bodies or authorities. That is not proposed by the Bill at all. The Committees which were set up to collect the funds are apparently given almost unlimited powers, subject to the approval of the Local Government Board, and I think that is a weak part of the scheme. The sole object of these very brief and inadequate remarks is to secure some form of popular control in the disposal of the money, and I think that that will be best achieved by the adoption of the proposal which would pool the money under the direction of the local authority, and see that it was given to necessitous and deserving objects
in the localities. The committees were purely temporary in purpose and outlook. They cannot possibly, in many cases, apply these funds even to schemes which were similar to schemes for which they were collected, because with the War the schemes have disappeared and the needs too. I think, therefore, the way suggested would be a better way of dealing with these funds.

Mr. A. SHAW: I rise merely with the object of adding my protest to that of my hon. Friend opposite that the Government should desire to take all the stages of the Bill to-night. I am glad, from the gesture of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General, that that is not the case, because this Bill deals with very large sums of money subscribed for by the public of Scotland, who have absolutely by this Bill no say in the way their money is to be expended. A great deal might be done on the lines suggested by the last speaker by some locally-elected body, who would have the right to speak as to the disposal of the money, or the alternative suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy, that a scheme should be drawn up and lie on the Table of the House, so that the Parliamentary representatives of the people concerned should have the right of bringing consideration to bear upon the very large sums of money involved.

INTESTATE HUSBAND'S ESTATE (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. MORISON: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
This Bill has been introduced to assist the procedure in connection with the administration of an intestate husband's estate. The Bill amends the principal Act and improves the method by which the estate is being administered. By the Statute to which I have just referred the estate of a person who has died, leaving no children and no will, comes to his widow if that estate is less than £500. If it is over £500 she is entitled under that Statute, to obtain the first £500. In
practice it has been found that difficulties have arisen where part of the estate of the deceased person was heritable. The widow now no right to enable her to make up a title to the heritable subjects. Accordingly, if the heir-at-law refused to come forward or could not be found, in many cases the widow was unable to make good the rights which she had received under the Statute. This Bill in Clause 1 provides new procedure which enables the widow to apply to the sheriff and to abtain her rights under the Statute. The first Section prescribes the form of application, the second provides for the necessary intimation to all those interested in the succession, and the third refers to the case in which the estate is less than £500 and is more than £500, and in either case sets out the proper procedure for giving effect to the sheriff's decree. The fourth Sub-section deals with the Death Duties, the fifth repeals Section 5 of the principal Act, because under Section 3 of the present Bill the power of fixing the value of the estate is given to the sheriff on the widow's application. This is purely a technical matter. The Bill relates exclusively to procedure in the Court. It has already been passed in another place, and I submit that it should be read a second time.

Sir DONALD MACLEAN: This is a Bill which, so far as I am concerned, might very easily be taken in all its stages to-night. It is a matter which ought to be dealt with quite promptly, because there is a very large number of women who have become widows in Scotland, as in other parts of the Kingdom, and this Bill makes the position of Scottish widows something like as convenient for the purpose of getting her husband's estate as is the English widow's position. It has passed through the hands of very able Scottish lawyers in another place, and, so far as my knowledge of Scottish law is concerned, I have applied what little I know to it, and I think this Bill meets a real need. So far as I am concerned, I have no objection to all the stages being taken to-night.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill."—[Mr. Pratt.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee.

[Sir E. CORNWALL in the Chair.]

Clause 1,

Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I do not desire to delay this measure, but I think it is absolutely reasonable that hon. Members should have an opportunity of putting down Amendments if they so desire, but it should be an understanding that the Government will get the Bill in two nights if they agree to postpone it now. I respond to the appeal of my right hon. Friend opposite, but these Bills really ought to go to a Scottish Grand Committee. I move,
That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

MINISTRY OF WAYS AND COMMUNICATIONS [MONEY].

Considered in Committee.—[Progress, 20th March.]

[Sir E. CORNWALL in the Chair.]

Question again proposed—
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to establish a Ministry of Ways and Communications, it is expedient—

(1) To authorise the payment out of moneys to be provided by Parliament—

(a) of an annual salary not exceeding five thousand pounds to the Minister of Ways and Communications, of annual salaries not exceeding one thousand five hundred pounds to the Parliamentary Secretaries of the Ministry, and of such other salaries, remuneration, and expenses as may become payable under such Act;
(b) of such sums as may be required to fulfil any guarantee, to make contributions to pension or superannuation funds, and to make advances and other payments authorised under such Act;
(2) To authorise the creation and issue of securities, with interest to be charged so far as not met out of other sources of revenue on the Consolidated Fund."

Colonel GRETTON: I beg to move,
That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.
This Resolution raises a matter of very great importance which cannot be debated at this time of night.

Lord E. TALBOT (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): indicated assent.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

MEDICAL TREATMENT OF CHILDREN (IRELAND) BILL. [EXPENSES].

Committee to consider authorising the payment to local authorities, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of an amount not exceeding one-half of the expenses incurred by local authorities in the execution of any Act of the present Session, to make provision for the medical treatment of children attending ele-
mentary schools in Ireland (King's Recommendation signified) To-morrow.—(Lord E. Talbot.)

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 12th February, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."

Adjourned accordingly at Two minutes after Eleven o'clock.